Bruins Go Up 3-0 on Rangers

The Sens will try to tie their series with the Pens on Wednesday night.

The Boston Bruins are on the verge of sweeping the New York Rangers and advancing to the Eastern Conference Finals after a 2-1 in Game Three on Tuesday night. The two Original Six teams have not met in the playoffs in 40 years. How is that possible? The Bruins seem intent on making it a short series as they need only one more win to wrap it up.

Daniel Paille scored the game winning goal at 16:29 in the third period to put New York on life support. The Bruins went into the period trailing 1-0 when Johnny Boychuk tied it 1-1 3:10 into the period. Taylor Pyatt put the Rangers ahead 1-0 in the second period.

The Bruins, who won the Stanley Cup just two years ago, are on a collision course with the Pittsburgh Penguins, The Pens will face the Ottawa Senators tonight in Game Four in Ottawa. Pittsburgh leads that series 2-1. Ottawa ties the series with a win in tonight’s game after taking Game Three 2-1 in double overtime. Game time is 7:30 and it will be televised on NBC Sports Network.

Bovada has the Penguins -1.5 +205 while the Senators are +1.5 -245 ATS. Moneyline is Pittsburgh -150 and Ottawa +130. Over/Under is 5.5 with over even and under -130. We are going to go with Pittsburgh -150 and the over even.

Ottawa is confident going into the game at their home arena that they can tie things up tonight. “The next game is the biggest game of the year, that’s the way it is,” Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson said. “No matter what happens you treat it (as the biggest game) and when that’s done you do the same for the next one.

Alfredsson tied the game with 29 seconds left in regulation to avoid going down three games to none in the series. That would have been a death blow as teams rarely come back from that deficit.

The Bruins Rangers series resumes tomorrow night from Madison Square Garden where the Rangers must win to send it back to Boston for Game Five. The Rangers were battling history before last night’s loss. No NHL team has ever won consecutive series after being down 0-2 in both. Now that deficit climbs to 0-3 making it that much more difficult. Still, more NHL teams have come back from down 3-0 than in any of the NBA and MLB teams combined. It has never happened in the NBA and only one time in baseball, oddly enough in a Boston-New York series. Only it was Boston who was down 3-0 in the 2004 ALCS.

Three NHL teams have come back from down 3-0, the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs did it in the Stanley Cup Finals to beat the Detroit Red Wings, the New York Islanders in 1975 did it to the Penguins and in 2010, the Philadelphia Flyers did it to…the Boston Bruins.