The New York Islanders have the Boston Bruins’ number.
Not only did the Bruins suffer their third regulation loss of the season to the Islanders on Thursday, but they did it in a rather ugly fashion.
It wasn’t for a lack of effort for the opening 40 minutes. The Bruins came out of the gates flying as Nick Ritchie scored 62 seconds in on a brilliant feed from Jakub Zboril. They fell behind after Adam Pelech’s rebound tally and Mat Barzal finishing a 2-on-1 in the opening stanza, yet evened things up in the second after Craig Smith’s attempted pass to Jack Studnicka — who hit a post on a wide-open net in the first — deflected off an Islanders defender past Semyon Varlamov.