Lucic, Thomas Come Up Big in Bruins Win

By KC Downey in Bruins, Featured ⋅ March 30, 2009 at 7:15am ⋅ Post a comment

With only seven games left in the regular season, the Bruins are finally on the right track after a rough month and a half of play. Almost like flipping a light switch, the Bruins have now won three straight games including Sunday night’s 4-3 win over the Flyers.

Milan Lucic scored two goals and Tim Thomas finished with 45 saves to help the Bruins get to 106 points, seven ahead of second-place Washington and eight ahead of third place New Jersey.

Thomas faced an onslaught of 48 shots and stopped all but three of them, helping him get his career-best 32nd win of the season.

“Offensively we were opportunistic and scored some big goals and we’re getting that part of our game together,” Thomas said. “We’re making steps forward in the other direction (defense). but I don’t think anybody thinks that we’re completely there. I think it’s a step in the right direction.”

Claude Giroux scored early in the first period to give the Flyers the early lead, but that lead was short lived.

The Bruins responded with three goals in the first. two goals by Milan Lucic at 10:39 and 17:54 sandwiched a Dennis Wideman goal with six minutes to go in the period.

Mike Richards made the score 3-2 in the second period with his 29th goal. Mark Recchi effectively put the game away early in the third period, and the Bruins held the 4-2 lead until there was less than two minutes left. That’s when Philly’s Simon Gagne scored his 31st goal of the season to make it 4-3.

David Krejci finished with three assists and Zdeno Chara added two assists in the win.

The Bruins next play the Lightning on Tuesday night.