Bruins rout Panthers to increase east lead

The Boston Bruins were clearly happy to be back on their home ice at the TD BankNorth Garden as they demolished the Florida Panthers 6-1 on Tuesday night.  The victory was the 4^th in the past six meetings between the two teams and avenged a 2-0 loss at Florida last Saturday night.

It didn’t take long for the Bruins to get on the board, as Patrice Bergeron scored unassisted just :48 seconds into the game.  Mark Stuart’s goal at 6:17 of the period assisted by Michael Ryder and Blake Wheeler made it 2-0 before the Panthers answered a few minutes later on Kamil Kreps’ goal from Nick Tarnasky and Anthony Stewart.  The Bruins took a 2-1 advantage into the locker room at the end of the period.

Checking line forward Byron Bitz scored only his 2^nd goal of the year late in the second period, with assists to Stephane Yelle and Shawn Thornton to give the Bruins a 3-1 lead. Bitz would score again early in the third to make it 4-1, with Yelle and Dennis Wideman assisting.  The Bruins would pour it on from that point, with goals by Aaron Ward (assisted by Marc Savard and Milan Lucic) and a powerplay tally by Michael Ryder (assisted by Savard and P.J. Axelsson) producing the final margin of victory.

Bitz, who had just been called up from Providence of the AHL last month, was named the game’s ‘first star’ and received praise afterwards from his coach Claude Julien:

"He got rewarded for doing the things that we've been kind of preaching for the last little while. This guy here, not only does he bring size and strength along the boards, he's been solid, but I think he's a guy that I think with confidence and with experience you're going to see him probably score more goals. He demonstrated a little bit of that tonight.”

Panthers’ coach Peter DeBoer called the ‘game’ ugly and vowed to move on:

"It was just ugly. I didn't think it was as bad as the score indicated. We spotted them two goals, which we can't do to anybody, let alone the best team in the league."

"We'll burn the tape and keep moving forward. We've played more good than bad lately. We've just got to keep moving forward."