Roughly half of Bruins fans wanted a win. The rest wanted a regulation loss to lock up their best possible position heading into the NHL Draft Lottery.
The 2024-25 season served up one last dose of frustration for all of them as Boston lost 5-4 to the Devils in overtime on Tuesday at TD Garden.
Sixty minutes wasn’t enough to close out the regular season for the Bruins. Boston erased a two-goal lead to force overtime, earning them one point that prevented them from locking up the No. 4 spot pre-lottery.
The Bruins finished their season at 33-39-10, while New Jersey, which will face Carolina in the playoffs, has one more regular season game on Wednesday against Detroit.
Goals came in bunches early on. Timo Meier scored 7:25 into the game and newly crowned 7th Player Award winner Morgan Geekie tied the game 1:18 later. to make it 1-1 after the first period.
David Pastrnak scored his 43rd goal of the season just 29 seconds into the second period to briefly give Boston a 2-1 lead.
“Obviously it wasn’t a perfect game,” David Pastrnak said. “They scored a quick two goals ( in the second period). Good on us in the third to tie it up. We were confident we could score a goal, the focus was for us to lock it in for 20 (minutes).”
But the Devils answered with two quickly. Jeremy Swayman thought he had the puck covered underneath, but no whistle blew and New Jersey poked it free and Stefan Noesen tapped into the vacated goal.
The Garden crowd was still voicing its displeasure with the officials for allowing Noesen’s goal when former Bruins and Massachusetts native Marc McLaughlin set up Simon Nemec 30 seconds later to put Jersey up 3-2.
After Dawson Mercer stretched that lead to 4-2, John Farinacci scored his first NHL goal in his first NHL game. The Red Bank, New Jersey native’s goal against his home-state team made it 4-3.
Fabian Lysell won a race to a puck and continued to finish his season strong as he fed Marat Khusnutdinov, who scored as he cut through the slot to tie the game 4-4 with 14:52 left.
Maine native Brian Dumoulin beat Swayman, 1:50 into overtime.
Swayman had 21 saves in his final game of the season.
