Pastrnak responds to Montgomery’s challenge in Game 7 win for Bruins

BOSTON -- Two days, and a lifetime ago, Jim Montgomery sat at a podium in Toronto and sent a message to his biggest offensive threat.

The Boston Bruins had just suffered a second straight defeat in a close-out game against the Toronto Maple Leafs and demons were rearing their heads. Boston wasn’t scoring and he went ahead and said it.

“‘Pasta’ needs to step up,” Montgomery said, after Game 6.

He knew it. David Pastrnak knew it too.

So, it was a relief and a redemption when, at the time the Bruins needed him most, Pastrnak was there.

Defenseman Hampus Lindholm had the puck just behind the red line. Pastrnak started skating up the right side of the ice, slipping to the outside of Mitch Marner, who didn’t appear to know he was there until it was too late. Pastrnak cut across the right circle, catching up to the puck from Lindholm after it bounced off the end boards, placed just so for him to skate across the crease and backhand it past the flattened Ilya Samsonov.

At 1:54 of overtime of Game 7 of the Eastern Conference First Round on Saturday, Pastrnak had scored the game-winner. It was 2-1, Bruins, and they were moving on to the second round.

He yelled. The team hugged. TD Garden was pandemonium.

“It obviously helped,” Pastrnak said, of the message from Montgomery. “You have this conversation with Jimmy. He said the stuff he did after Game 6. I told him, ‘If I am the coach and you are me, I would say the same thing.’ So, I had no problem of him saying that. He’s trying to bring the best out of every single player and he expects more.

“I just took it as a man and tried to be better. I admitted I need to be better. I still have a ways to be better.”

But even if there’s more to give -- and there is throughout the whole Bruins team, with the exception of Jeremy Swayman in net -- Pastrnak did enough on this night, did enough in Game 7, did enough that the Bruins didn’t suffer a second straight collapse, from up 3-1 in a best-of-7 series to losing in Game 7, as they did last season against the Florida Panthers.

To do that, they needed Pastrnak. And Montgomery had seen it coming. Well, maybe not that, exactly. But he had seen that Pastrnak was ready.

“When I walked in this morning, he had a smile on his face, ear-to-ear,” Montgomery said. “He goes, ‘What’s up, coach? You sleep well?’ And as soon as I know he’s in that frame of mind, I knew he was going to be good tonight.”

He was better throughout the game, his line improved, committed to winning their matchups throughout the game. But never more so than just those two short minutes into the overtime when his experience playing with Lindholm came through.

Because even if Marner didn’t know what Pastrnak was doing, Lindholm did.

“I saw him swinging, so obviously it was on purpose. I was hoping it would kick out good for him there. Then the way he handles that puck and puts it over the pads, that’s a few guys that can do that.”

Pastrnak is one of them.

“I don’t know how he finishes it sometimes, honestly,” Boston forward Charlie Coyle said. “I can’t wait to watch a replay and see how he does it, with barely any tape on his stick, either. He just corrals it a certain way. That’s what he does for us. He did it at a big moment, but he’s a big player and he usually does.”

This is a player who has scored 61 goals in an NHL season, which he did in 2022-23, and scored 47 this season, among his 110 points. He is a player who, at his best, can be dynamic and creative and almost impossible to stop, a player who can take over a game. But so far in the series, he hadn’t. He had four points (two goals, two assists) coming into Game 7.

He knew he needed to shoot the puck more, to have more of a shooter’s mentality.

He had four shots on goal in Game 7, two more pucks that missed the net, two more than were blocked. He did more when they needed him to do more.

The Bruins will need that in the next round, where they will face the waiting Panthers in a quick turnaround, starting with Game 1 on Monday at Amerant Bank Arena (8 p.m. ET; ESPN, SN, TVAS, CBC).

But for now, they have gotten what they wanted, avoiding the fate that befell them last season, seeing a better effort and better result from their most important offensive player, getting the resiliency they never quite developed last season, never more so than when Lindholm scored the team’s first goal at 10:22 of the third period, just 1:21 after William Nylander scored what could have been a backbreaker at 9:01.

“We have a real tough test coming ahead and we know that,” Montgomery said. “We haven’t won anything yet. We’ve just earned the right to play in the second round.”