Recchi

Bring on the playoffs!

That’s what everyone was screaming by the time Mark Recchi’s overtime goal lifted the Boston Bruins over the Montreal Canadiens April 9 at TD Banknorth Garden. It was pretty obvious the Bruins and Habs were going to meet in a first-round playoff series starting a week later, so Boston’s comeback win sent a message to the Bruins’ hated rivals and earned the No. 6 spot on my list of the club’s top 10 victories of the 2008-09 regular season.

Things were pretty heated from the start, with Josh Gorges even nailing Patrice Bergeron after the Boston center scored the only goal of the first period with 2:02 left before intermission. When the horn sounded, a scrum ensued, during which Zdeno Chara gave Mike Komisarek a couple tastes of glove.

As far as the hockey was concerned, the second period was scintillating. After Alex Kovalev tied the game, Phil Kessel and Recchi put the Bruins up by two. Then Montreal answered with three straight goals, including two by Matt D’Agostini, to grab a lead before the third period.

The Bruins, however, held the edge in the extracurricular activities. Shawn Thornton destroyed a turtling Ryan O’Byrne in a center-ice tilt, and Shane Hnidy pounded the heck out of Gorges. Milan Lucic got a little carried away when retaliating for an open-ice hit by Komisarek, as the winger jumped the Habs defenseman from behind to earn a 10-minutes misconduct. But otherwise, it was all good, clean fun.

It was back to hockey in the third period, and Mathieu Dandenault’s delay-of-game penalty set the stage for Chara to score the game-tying goal from in front off a rebound of a Recchi shot 5:27 into the session.

In overtime, the teams exchanged chances until Bergeron leveled Maxim Lapierre while the Habs center was trying to skate the puck across the Montreal blue line. Bergeron then grabbed the puck and fed it to a streaking Recchi for the winner. Recchi continued to prove he was one of the best pick-ups of the March trade deadline and Bergeron continued to prove he was back into his pre-concussion form. More important, the Bruins let the Habs know they weren’t going to let the physical play distract from the ultimate goal of winning games and advancing in the postseason.