BOSTON — For a moment there was joy at TD Garden.
With the Bruins trailing by a goal early in the third period, they had an offensive zone faceoff in the Jets end despite being short-handed. Pavel Zacha won the draw cleanly to Elias Lindholm who snapped it by Hellebuyck to tie the game, 11 seconds into the third.
Both the Bruins, who got blown out on Tuesday and Lindholm, who has had a rough season offensively, desperately needed a goal and momentum in the game and the season. The crowd, who’d been eager for anything to cheer about after Boston got behind early, roared.
The Bruins had life. The building had energy.
It lasted 24 seconds.
The tying goal only made the Jets mad. After Mark Scheifele scored to put the Jets back ahead on the power play. Nikolaj Ehlers added another 17 seconds later. Mason Lohrei was circling the net tight in his own end. Ehlers just reached out one-handed and poked the puck off his stick knocking it into the Boston net.
In those 41 seconds, the game went from promising to out of reach as the Jets cruised to a 6-2 win.
After Parker Ford, who was playing in his first NHL game not far from his Wakefield, Rhode Island roots, scored to make it 5-2 with 14:02 left, each timeout sent more frustrated fans to the exits. Kyle Connor added an empty netter to complete the total.
The Bruins (25-22-6) will face the Rangers on Saturday.
Home cooking was not the answer. The Bruins have been a lousy road team all year. Only their strong home record has kept them afloat in the playoff race. So there was reason to hope they could reverse Tuesday’s stinker to the Sabres in Buffalo and their 8-1 loss to the Jets in Winnipeg in December amidst familiar surroundings at TD Garden.
No luck.
Vladislav Namestnikov put the Bruins in a 1-0 hole less than three minutes into the game as he beat Joonas Korpisalo on an early power play.
The Jets appeared to have made it 2-0 less than three minutes later on a Josh Morrissey shot off the rush. But the Bruins challenged quickly and the referees didn’t have to watch video for long before overturning the goal for offsides.
There was no overturning Scheifele’s 30th goal of the season with 8:29 left. Since being left off the Team Canada roster that Bruins general manager Don Sweeney had a hand in picking for the NHL 4 Nations Face-Off, Scheifele has dominated Sweeney’s team. He has four goals and two assists in two games this season against Boston. He tipped in Neal Pionk’s shot to make it 2-0.
Brad Marchand got one back on the power play before the end of the period. With 4:26 Marchand picked a spot laser-beamed puck through a screen past Connor Hellebuyck to make it 2-1.
Neither team scored in the second setting up the third-period fireworks. Korpisalo made 25 saves in the loss.
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