David Pastrnak’s bank-shot homage to ‘pool halls’ seals Bruins win over Red Wings
Bruins
“I was like, ‘What do you mean — are you trying to play some pool tonight?'”

David Pastrnak might have 309 career goals on his resume, but the 27-year-old winger is far from a one-trick pony when it comes to his offensive-zone wizardry.
A howitzer of a one-time shot has dented multiple penalty-kill units and made even the sturdiest netminders duck for cover.
But the All-Star winger can dice up opposing defensive structures via a sharp wrist shot, an array of dekes and dangles, or even an elusive tribute to Luis Tiant with a disguised shot into the top corner.
But on a night where Pastrnak once again made an established goalie in Ville Husso bite left and right en route to his second penalty-shot goal of the 2023-24 season, most of the questions he fielded following Boston’s 4-1 win revolved more around his empty-net tally with 2:19 left on the clock.
After all, Pastrnak is a menace when he has his sights set on twine. But if he’s lighting the lamp on bank shots? The rest of the NHL might be in trouble.
“Pasta, I betcha he doesn’t know geometry,” Jim Montgomery said postgame of Pastrnak’s shot off the boards that eventually slid into Detroit’s net. “But [he] knows it probably in pool halls, and he definitely knows it on the ice.”
Pastrnak received some much-needed clarity during his postgame scrum with the media, considering that teammate Patrick Brown asked him a similar question about whether his skill at pool paid dividends during his second goal of the evening.
“Oh okay that’s why — Brown asked me if I’m a good pool player and I didn’t get it,” Pastrnak said with a smile. “I was like, ‘What do you mean — are you trying to play some pool tonight?’ So I told him, ‘No, I’m terrible.’ Now I got it, thank you.”
“No, I’m not good,” Pastrnak added of his pool game after a pause. “I was just exhausted.”
Pastrnak, who has now scored eight times in Boston’s first eight games of the new season, acknowledged that a ricochet shot was far from being at the forefront of his thought process when he let the puck go after Husso decided to vacate the net.
“No, I was just trying to get it out,” Pastrnak acknowledged. “I was there for a while and I wanted to get a change, honestly. … Just a lucky bounce. Yeah, I just tried to get off the ice, and get some fresh legs.”
Pastrnak likely won’t be padding his stats this season with a bevy of bank shots and other fortunate bounces.
But given his versatile skill set and potent shot, the All-Star should be able to beat goalies night and night out with the several other moves at his disposal.
“Yeah, he’s got a mixed bag and that’s hard to do in this league,” Jeremy Swayman said of Pastrnak’s game. “[To be] unreadable and have some many different go-to moves. … Again, that’s why he’s an all-class player. I’m glad he’s on my team.”
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