Bruins Crack DeCode, Solve Penguins and DeSmith

“If you build it, he will come.”

That extrasensory nudge was whispered into the ear of Kevin Costner’s character in the all-time baseball classic, Field of Dreams.

It seems the offensively challenged Bruins received a similar cosmic message yesterday afternoon at TD Garden. Something to the effect of, “If you crash the net, you will score.” Boy, did they ever. To the tune of a 7-5 triumph over our streaking Penguins at TD Garden.

In the process, they cracked the previously unbeatable Casey DeSmith and exposed our defensive deficiencies down low…big time.

I had an inkling this wouldn’t be your ordinary hockey game when Mark Jankowski of all people scored on a deflection just 3:24 into the opening frame. The Pens limited the Bruins to just six shots on goal…all stopped by DeSmith…and took a 1-0 lead into the first intermission.

Business as usual. Then the lid blew off.

Patrice Bergeron struck for Boston 11 seconds into the second period, followed in rapid succession by David Pastrnak 34 tics later. Both goals came from close range, a recurring theme throughout the afternoon.

Suddenly down 2-1, our boys responded with a little nitro of their own. At 2:45, Sidney Crosby found Jake Guentzel with a slick pass from behind the net. “The Snake” buried it for his 16th goal of the season. Minutes later Jared McCann beat Jaroslav Halak off the rush on a power play to restore the Pens’ lead.

Again, the game settled down…at least on the scoreboard…until Brad Marchand swept the puck past DeSmith, again from point-blank range, to knot the score at 3-3. Moments later the weasely Bruins forward squirted gasoline on an incipient fire by targeting Kris Letang for abuse, sparking a five-on-five scrum near the Pens’ net.

At this stage, I walked away from the TV for a few minutes. When I returned the score was 5-3 in favor of Boston. Replays revealed two tallies in 71 seconds, again from the prime scoring areas, by David Krejci and Marchand.  The last marker just 20 seconds before the second-period horn.

Frankly, I was stunned. So were our Pens.

Yet typical of our never-say-die attitude, we continued to battle. Jankowski set up Cody Ceci with a cross-zone pass and the black-and-gold defender did the rest, beating Halak to the glove side with a slick shot to pull us to within a goal. Our guys pressed for the equalizer, but Boston responded again on Pastrnak’s second goal of the game.

Remarkably, the Pens still weren’t finished. With Letang in the box, Crosby scored a shorty at 18:45 to make the score 6-5. Alas, a heroic comeback wasn’t in the cards as Marchand rifled home an empty netter seconds later to conclude a disappointing afternoon.

Perhaps Ceci summed it up best.

“We just weren’t getting to sticks, or guys were getting away from us or we were just losing our man in front of the net,” he said. “That’s where a lot of their goals came from. … Can’t give up that many chances in the slot.”

Puckpourri

The Pens and Bruins had 28 shots on goal apiece. Our hosts won 60 percent of the faceoffs. Each team was 1-for-3 on the power play. A hidden stat…we had a dozen giveaways to the B’s three.

All of Boston’s scoring came from their big guns, including six by the Perfection Line, while the Pens continued to get scoring from up and down the lineup. Crosby and Guentzel paced the locals with three points each, followed by Jankowski’s two-point effort.

It was a rough afternoon for DeSmith. So good in his recent outings, Casey saw his goals against average balloon from 1.84 to 2.13, while his save percentage dropped to .922. Maxime Lagace once again served as backup.

Following a relatively tame opening period, the game morphed into a rugged affair that featured numerous scrums.

The loss snapped our five-game winning streak and nudged us back into third place in the MassMutual East with 50 points, seven ahead of the fourth-place Bruins, who have four games in hand.

Up next, the Rangers at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night.