The atmosphere in Boston's TD Garden was electric from the get-go on Saturday as the Bruins took to the ice to try and close out the Detroit Red Wings in Game 1 of their first round series.

And the Bs didn't disappoint the sellout crowd of 17,565 as they survived a late comeback attempt by the Red WIngs to hold on for a 4-2 win.

The win moves the Bruins one step closer to the Stanley Cup, but before they get there, they will have to get past an ancient rival as the Montreal Canadiens await the Bruins in the second round of the playoffs.

In a postgame press conference, Bruins' forward Patrice Bergeron said he was looking forward to taking on the Habs.

Again, it’s always great to play these guys. Detroit was definitely a great challenge. Same thing with Montreal, I think. They’re a great team. They’re a team that definitely is playing some great hockey right now. They played well against Tampa. It’s going to be a good challenge again for us. And like you said, there’s lots of history behind both teams so it’s going to be fun to be part of it.

Forward Milan Lucic discussed the recent history that the two teams shared.

Yeah, definitely. Fourth time now since 2008 that we faced them here in the playoffs, first time that it isn’t a first-round match-up, so another Original Six battle that we get to be a part of and a lot of hatred between the teams, the fans, the cities when it comes to this kind of rivalry, so we expect them to bring their best. We saw what they were able to do in the first series, and like I said we got to be prepared to come out and elevate our game as the playoffs move on.

 

Boston took control of the game early on as Loui Eriksson opened the scoring at 3:27 of the first, getting the assist from Dougie Hamilton and Tukka Rask. Detroit tied the score late in the second as Pavel Datsyuk beat Rask at 14:41 of the second.

But the tie didn't last long as Boston broke Detroit's spirit with a power play goal from Zdeno Chara with just four seconds left in the second period (Bergeron and Torey Krug with the assists). The goal seemed to pump life into the Bruins and the Garden crowd as the noise inside the building was off the charts as Chara screamed toward his teammates on the Bruin bench.

Milan Lucic essentially put the game away at the 4:27 mark of the third as he got open in front of Wings goalie Jonas Gustavsson and put the puck home with an assist from Krug. The Red Wings did make things interesting with just over four minutes to play as Henrik Zetterberg scored to make it 3-2, but Rask was solid the rest of the way and Jerome Iginla sealed things with an empty net goal with 16 seconds left, triggering a celebration inside the Garden that spilled outside onto Causeway Street as fans were chanting "Let's Go Bruins" as they made their way home.

After the game, Rask tried to downplay the significance of facing the Canadiens.

I think people tend to make it a huge deal outside our locker room, but we’ve learned over the years that the more focus resting on our own doing and keep the focus on us, we get the better results, so for me and for everybody else I think it’s just another series we want to win and [we’re] looking forward to it. They have a great team, so it’s going to be tough, but we’ll see.

The NHL has not set a date for the beginning of the next round of the playoffs.

Listen to the Bruins right through the playoffs on our sister station, 1400 & 1490, Kool-AM!

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