Krejci/By S. Bradley
PHILADELPHIA – Bruins center David Krejci is as skilled at forgetting the past as he is at finding the open man.
Tonight, however, Philadelphia wouldn’t let him forget what happened in Game 3 of last season’s Eastern Conference semifinal series with the Flyers.
“Yeah, obviously there is the yapping back and forth, so they kind of let me know,” said Krejci when asked if the Flyers brought up his broken wrist from last season during the Bruins’ Game 1 win in this year’s second-round rematch at the Wells Fargo Center. “Like I said you just have to stay focused and I think that’s what we did tonight.”
Krejci didn’t let the reminders of last spring or the fact that he scored just one point in the first round hold him back during Boston’s 7-3 rout. He spoke yesterday about the new series being a fresh start. He couldn’t have been any fresher, as he scored two goals and assisted on two others.
In total, Krejci and linemates Nathan Horton and Milan Lucic were a plus-8. Horton recorded a goal and an assist.
Krejci made sure the Bruins had the start they wanted by utilizing his patience and roofing a shot from in front of Flyers goaltender Brian Boucher 1:52 into the game. He later scored on a tip-in and made a strong defensive play to prevent a Kris Versteeg shorthanded goal that would’ve been Krejci’s fault because of a giveaway around the goal.
Krejci forgot about his errant stickhandling on that play the same way he blocked out everything else negative. He’s shown that knack in the past and his favorite line is “I’m not thinking about that” when he’s asked about a game or a stretch of games that didn’t go his way.
Although he won’t always talk about the past, Krejci can sometimes be affected by it, as head coach Claude Julien explained.
“I think he’s more of a quiet person. He doesn’t say much. But you know, once you’ve had him for a long time, you kind of know his demeanor, you get to know how he operates and he’s a very quiet kid, but he’s a very determined individual,” said Julien. “There are certain times where he puts so much pressure on himself that it doesn’t always help him. Once he finds his stride, he’s a very determined player. So hopefully this game this afternoon has really helped him and is hopefully going to keep him going that way.”
The Flyers can’t be much worse defensively than they were today. So the challenge will only get greater for Krejci, especially if Philadelphia’s top pair of Chris Pronger and Matt Carle start playing up to their capabilities and get into lockdown mode on Krejci’s line.
That means Krejci would do well to forget his positive performance the way he files away the ugly ones deep in the back of his mind.
“Yeah you know as a team if you go through the [first] round that’s a good thing. For me I know I didn’t prove that much but I still thought my line played pretty well,” he said. “We had so many chances, we just couldn’t bury them and that sometimes happens. The season has a lot of ups and downs and it was a tough series for us but I think we bounced back and we had a good game today.
“One game doesn’t make a playoff so we have to keep it going.”
If he keeps it going, Krejci will have plenty to remind the Flyers’ talkers about. And the Bruins will probably have a series to remember.
Jeff I think you are right. I noticed that both the Bergeron and Krejci lines put up goals yesterday. Match Richards against either and the other will shine.
I think the danger of the Flyers is their offensive capabilities-they have some good shooters and they have some players with a real nose for the puck and they will capitalize off mistakes, but they don’t seem as sound defensively across all their lines. There isn’t a line the Bruins roll that doesn’t have sound defense.
I do think the Flyers are going to have to match their best checking line against the Krejci line. I for one don’t think I want Richards anywhere near Krejci.
All the commentators kept commenting on putting the Richards line on the HuLK line. thats a great idea but i have a feeling that if thats done then whatever line the Richards line was covering will start getting it done.
Ha all good comments I really felt that no one at NBC wanted or expected to win. They gave no credit to the B’s trouncing of the flyers. I am not getting cocky but Montreal had more speed and was a tougher match up than philly. Best part was Milan and Charra did not have stand out games so I don’t think we have seen the best yet.
pierre mcguire’s man crush on pronger >>> jack edwards man crush on brick.
Yeah I am worried just a bit about the targeting of Krejci. Looking for good hits is one thing-you gotta hit him if he has the puck, but the arm and leg slashes and cheap shots are not okay, and given how awful our PP is I am sure the Flyers are going to think it is worth the penalty to give his arm or legs a real good slash.
While I think the team is built better this year to survive a Krejci loss, losing Krejci would still be a devastating blow to the team and one, if they survive this round might not survive another round.
The Bruins are going to have to watch this-and maybe be willing to take a penalty themselves if the refs aren’t going to step in (and honestly I think our chances might be better 4 on 4 than on a PP).
and people defend jack Edwards…
Pierre Mcguire repeatedly insinuated that for the Flyers to have success they had to take cheap runs at Krejci. As dumb as a lot of the stuff they say on NBC, i’ve never heard such senseless idiotic comments (even from mcguire) on a national broadcast. Dude should be embarrassed.
…oops, that was Giroux taking the penalty in the 2nd and Meszaros in the 3rd after flyer goals.
I expect the flyers to target both Krejci and TT going forward in this series…..flyers should bench Carcillo. Taking a penalty after their scoring a goal was stupid!