BOSTON — The monkey was off Brad Marchand’s back, then it wasn’t, and then it was.
The Boston Bruins left winger, goal-less in his last 11 games played (plus three more that he sat out with a suspension), ended his drought with a dramatic game-winner scored with 47 seconds left in regulation to give the Bruins a 3-2 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs Saturday night at TD Garden.
Marchand, who had a goal erased earlier in the third period on a coach’s challenge, snapped a loose puck home from the left wing, beating Toronto goaltender Jonathan Bernier high to the glove side. It was the 16th goal of the season for the Bruins’ winger, and his first in 12 games played.
“It was nice to see him score that winner, even after he got the other one taken away,” Bruins coach Claude Julien said. “And it was the right call, but it’s got to be frustrating for him … but I guess he got rewarded at the end, and gave us a win that I thought we really deserved tonight.”
Bruins center Patrice Bergeron scored in the opening minute of both the first and second period, giving him a team-high 17 goals on the season.
It was the second win in as many games for the Bruins, who had lost three straight before beating Buffalo on Friday night. The Maple Leafs, meanwhile, lost their fifth straight in regulation, their longest such streak of the year.
“There are things we need to clean up, there are things we are going to clean up and try and get better,” said Toronto left winger Shawn Matthias, who had the Leafs’ second goal. “I mean nobody likes losing, there is nobody in there right now that is satisfied, we are all trying to get better. We owe it to our fans, we owe it to ourselves, we owe it to each other, we are playing hard for each other and we got to start putting some wins together.”
The win moved the Bruins into sole possession of third place in the Atlantic Division, one point ahead of Tampa Bay and Montreal. Toronto remained a point ahead of last-place Columbus in the East, but dead last in the Atlantic.
Bernier finished with 42 saves, while Bruin goaltender Tuukka Rask stopped 27 of 29 Toronto shots. But the save of the night came from an unlikely source in Bruin defenseman Torey Krug. With 3:30 to go in the third, a loose puck dribbled into the Boston zone and Rask came out to play it, with Leaf center Tyler Bozak pressuring him. Rask fumbled the play, and Bozak hit the trailing P.A. Parenteau with a setup pass, but Krug stationed himself in the empty crease and stopped Parenteau’s go-ahead bid.
“That was huge, that saved the game,” Marchand said. “We probably wouldn’t have scored there if he didn’t make the save, and you’ve got to give him credit. He sacrificed his body, put his face in front of the puck, made a big save, and ultimately we won because of it.”
Asked whether he was trying to take away a particular part of the net, Krug laughed.
“I was just trying to take up as much of the net as possible, which is tougher for me to do than other guys,” the 5-foot-9 defenseman said.
The Leafs had nine power plays in the game, but came up empty as the Bruin penalty kill continued to surge. The closest the Toronto man-advantage units came to scoring was Parenteau’s shot with 20 seconds left in the second period, which rang off the post behind Rask and skittered harmlessly away.
Bergeron needed just 45 seconds to put the Bruins on the board. With the Maple Leafs making a slow line change, defenseman Torey Krug hit the Boston center with a long stretch pass, and he walked in alone to beat Bernier for a 1-0 lead.
Leafs winger Leo Komarov snapped a 10-game goal-less streak with his team-leading 16th of the year at 4:31 of the first to tie the game at 1, taking a feed from center Nazem Kadri as he crashed the Boston net and putting back the rebound off his first effort.
Bergeron added his second of the game just 39 seconds into the second period. Zdeno Chara fired a wrister from just inside the blue line that Bergeron tipped up and over Bernier, and the puck trickled off the crossbar and in for a 2-1 Boston lead.
The Leafs equalized again late in the second. With Chara screaming for a call after being taken down in the opposite corner, a long spell of possession put the puck on Matthias’s stick in the left wing circle, and he buried it for his fourth of the year and a 2-2 tie at the 17:16 mark of the period.
Marchand looked to have given the Bruins the lead at the 7:23 mark of the third when Bergeron hit him for a backhand flip as he rushed to Bernier’s left side. But after a challenge by Babcock leading to a lengthy official review, he was ruled to have entered the zone ahead of Bergeron.
“I felt like I had the monkey off my back there and then to have it kind of taken away,” Marchand said. “We thought it was a little close and they could have let it go either way.”
The overturned goal put Marchand back in the hole, but only until his game-winner brought him out of it for good.