Bruins step up without Bergeron against Maple Leafs in Game 4

TORONTO -- The murmur swept through the press box minutes after the Boston Bruins took the ice for warmups on Thursday. Patrice Bergeron was not on the ice.
The tweet came next, from Boston's team account, announcing that Bergeron would not play in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference First Round against the Toronto Maple Leafs. He is day to day with an upper-body injury.

The news also swept through the Bruins, who found out shortly before taking the ice that their top-line center and alternate captain and heart would not be joining them.
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The Bruins barely blinked. They have been through this before.
As Boston has done on more than one occasion this season, which included on a 9-2-2 stretch without Bergeron from Feb. 27-March 23, it persevered, winning a game that, by all accounts, it should have lost.
The Bruins were in Toronto, facing a Maple Leafs team eager to even the first-round series before heading back to Boston for Game 5 on Saturday (8 p.m. ET; NBC, CBC, SN, TVAS), a Maple Leafs team that did not have to face Bergeron, which meant, as coach Mike Babcock said, "You're set up pretty good tonight. You've got to find a way to win."
But it was the Bruins who left the building on a high, with a 3-1 win that gave them a 3-1 lead in the best-of-7 series and put them one win from advancing.
Because even without Bergeron, it was his line -- David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand, and Riley Nash, who replaced Bergeron -- which scored the tiebreaking goal on a play that should have resulted in a chance for Toronto but instead ended up with the puck behind Maple Leafs goaltender Frederik Andersen.

Late in the second period, one Boston had come into the game vowing to take control of, a Nash pass in the direction of Marchand went for an icing with the score tied 1-1. The line had been on for a lengthy shift, one that would end for Marchand and Pastrnak at 1:15 of ice time each.
But before they could get to the bench, there was the matter of the defensive zone face-off.
"Not tired at all," Nash said. "Had my legs right underneath me.
"No, that was one that you just try and battle out. You definitely don't expect the outcome that we got out of that."
Nash lost the face-off to Auston Matthews, but Zach Hyman couldn't keep possession of the puck and it bounced to Bruins defenseman Adam McQuaid. McQuaid cleared it off the boards, past Maple Leafs defenseman Jake Gardiner, and Pastrnak collected the puck in the neutral zone.
With Marchand joining the rush, Pastrnak skated in on a 2-on-1 and sent a no-look pass to Marchand, who scored into an open net to give the Bruins a 2-1 lead at 16:55 of the second period.
It felt like a backbreaking moment, with the Maple Leafs only able only to look on as the Bruins celebrated, their exhaustion melted into elation.
"I was going to play the puck, but I saw [Gardiner] coming and miss, so I moved last second, and he let me go through," said Pastrnak, who had two assists. "So we got a chance to go 2-on-1. We always find the energy for that, somehow.
"I was just pretty tired. I tried to get it to Marchy's hands. It got through."
Torey Krug had gotten the Bruins on the board 28 seconds into the game to make it 1-0 with a shot from the top of the left circle. Jake DeBrusk scored on another 2-on-1 with David Krejci at 4:17 of the third period to extend the lead to 3-1.

They were bolstered, too, by huge saves from Tuukka Rask, who made 31 and turned aside multiple scoring chances from the Maple Leafs, including against Mitch Marner and his line in the first period, and then again on Marner on a breakaway in the second.
In total, Toronto almost doubled Boston in shot attempts (79-40).
But, as it often is, it was the top line that made the difference. That was the line that, with Bergeron, had 20 points in the first two games of the series (five goals, 15 assists), and added three more in Game 4.
That was the line that felt, even without its leader, that it still needed to raise its play for the team.
"I think everybody in the lineup feels a little bit of responsibility to step up their game, an extra couple percent better and just fill the void," Nash said.

They did. They filled the void and sent the Bruins home one win away from the Eastern Conference Second Round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs on a play that no one thought would be the one to win the game for them.
"It came out of nowhere, pretty much, but as soon as you saw it developing, you knew there was a good chance something good could happen," DeBrusk said. "That's why they're so special.