The second period for the Boston Bruins this season has been nothing but bad meat sandwiched between two tasty slices of great hockey - but not on Saturday night.
No, Saturday night's game between the Bruins and Pittsburgh Penguins was 60 minutes of physical, hard hitting hockey that went over the line between hockey and pure back alley debauchery at times - the periods seeming to meld together...
...but when the hitting and dark business was done and it came to winning time, the Bruins put the ugliness aside, scoring two goals in the final 1:31, including Zdeno Chara's game winner with 13 seconds left in regulation as Boston scored a thrilling 3-2 victory over the Penguins at TD Center in downtown Boston.
The loss dropped Pittsburgh into a tie with the Montreal Canadiens for the best record in the Eastern Conference, with the two points for the win leaving Boston just one game behind both.
The game turned ugly just as soon as the first puck hit the ice, and by the time the teams repaired for their respective rooms, the Bruins were down two men and the Penguins had one in an ambulance on the way to the hospital - and were also behind on the scoreboard 2-1.
It was obvious and apparent that the Penguins' game plan was the same plan that they employ every time they play Boston, play physical, hit them hard and let their defense transition into offense - and it worked. The hard play got under the Bruins' skin and the game got away from them.
But to the credit of the coaching staff, the Bruins came out of the room in the second period and leveled the playing field by simply playing hockey.
Brutal from the start, the game took on an ominous tone when Pittsburgh defenseman laid out Bruins' forward Loui Eriksson just 21 seconds in with a vicious shot that he turned right into, and that left Ericksson staggering to get up and the Bruins seething.
The shot left Eriksson with his second concussion of the season - the first was a goon shot from Buffalo's John Scott - but the only penalty called on the play was to Boston Captain Zdeno Chara for cross checking in retaliation, which set the stage for an opening period of hockey that took on a life of it's own and almost got away from the refs and the Bruins.
Boston tough guy Shawn Thornton attempted to engage with Orpik five minutes later, but Orpik refused and skated away, leaving Thornton in the box and the Penguins on the power play...
...less than a minute later, Penguins left wing Chris Kunitz beat Boston goaltender Tuukka Rask with a point blank shot for the low slot and Pittsburgh had a 1-0 lead and further escalating the frustration level of the revenge-minded Bruins - spilling over into fisticuffs soon after, Boston forward Milan Lucic getting a couple of gloved shots in on Pittsburgh's Deryk Engelland before they came off, then a little tango after that and both were gone for five.
Boston tied the game at the midway point of the opening period, Reilly Smith taking a pass from the trapezoid from Patrice Bergeron and snapping it home past Pittsburgh netminder Marc-Andre Fleury.
And then, it happened. With just under nine minutes left in the period, Penguins' left wing James Neal gave a prone Brad Marchand a knee to the head, the referee stopping play immediately - Orpik and Penguins defenseman Chris Letang were engaging in a scrum with Bruins' center Gregory Campbell when Thornton skated up from behind, threw Orpik to the ice and pummeled him twice with his fist, knocking him unconscious.
As the referees worked to separate the two skaters and to keep other scrums from developing, Letang
motioned fervently at the bench for the trainers to come out an attend to Orpik, who was eventually taken from the ice on a stretcher.
Thornton was issued a match penalty for Intent to Injure and has been informed that a meeting has been schedule between he and league director of player safety Brenden Shanahan, and is automatically suspended for Sunday's game at Toronto for the match penalty.
Orpik was evaluated and released from Massachusetts General Hospital and was able to travel home with his team.
Just as the two minute penalty to Neal expired, he sprinted from the penalty box toward the Bruins' zone and took a perfect stretch pass from defenseman Matt Niskanin right at the blue line and skated in on Rask from the left wing - Rask floating outside the crease to cut down Neal's angle, but Neal beat him easily for 2-1 lead that the Penguins took into the room with them at the first intermission.
They took it for the second intermission as well, as the teams seemed to use the twenty minutes to get back to skating an playing hockey after the horror and brutality of the play deflated the entire building for the rest of the open frame, the Bruins outshooting Pittsburgh 8-6...
...the intensity level back up to a fever pitch in the final frame, only this time it was hockey - skating, forecheck, backcheck, a clean game between two of the best teams in the league - both teams giving as good as they got, before the Bruins punched through with just a minute and a half left in the game.
Boston coach Claude Julien pulled Rask, who stopped 28 of 30 shots on the night to keep the Bruins in the game when everything else was falling apart, and having the extra skater left center David Krejci wide open in the low slot with at 18:31, snapping the equalizer past Fleury, who stopped just 18 of 21...
...but no one could have been as wide open as Chara was with just 13 seconds remaining in regulation, winding up in the high slot and releasing a rocket off the chain that singed the twine over Fleury's glove for the game winner, Chara dropping to his knees in celebration and, most likely, exhaustion.
The Bruins now embark on a stretch that sees them playing five of six on the road including the next four in a row, starting with Toronto on Sunday night - and the Bruins without Thornton, Eriksson and Chris Kelly who suffered an injury on a slashing call, already down defensemen Johnny Boychuk and Matt Bartkowski, so no one would be surprised to see some roster moves made in the next 24 hours.
Chara said after the game that the Penguins and his Bruins played "Playoff hockey" on Saturday night, so it's somewhat ironic that the next time these teams meet will be in the playoffs...
...which is a long time to stew over perceived wrongs and with scores to settle.
