The Bruins didn’t just beat Nashville on Thursday night. They rolled through the Predators with the kind of complete performance that makes a 6-0 game feel over before the third period even gets started.
At TD Garden, Boston spread the scoring around, got goals from five different players and had a member of each of its four lines hit the score sheet. Michael DiPietro handled the rest, stopping 28 shots for his first NHL shutout as the Bruins pushed their point streak to seven games at 6-0-1.
It was also a loud night for the top end of the lineup. David Pastrnak finished with two goals and two assists, Charlie McAvoy piled up four assists, and 10 skaters recorded points in all.
For DiPietro, the shutout carried extra weight because it came on Hockey Fights Cancer night. He lost his mother, Becky, to cancer when he was a young child, and he said afterward, “A little bit stressed out, but you couldn’t really write any better,” DiPietro said.
“My mom passed away when I was five from cancer so for me it means a lot but also to my family back home (in Ontario). I just want to make them proud and this is a very special moment.”
Boston came in after taking seven of a possible eight points on its western swing, and there was no hint of a letdown. McAvoy said the team was told to be sharp right from the morning skate.
“We had a focus this morning. (Coach Marco Sturm) brought it up that we wanted to be crisp starting with the pregame skate,” McAvoy said.
“Just go out, get what we need but be good about it, be pros and make sure we show up tonight. Everybody did a really good job of taking on that challenge and we started on time.
We just played a really great team game.”
The Bruins did exactly that from the opening shift. They struck first at 3:49 of the first period when McAvoy disrupted a Nashville zone entry and moved the puck to Pastrnak. With three Predators around him on the right side, Pastrnak found Casey Mittelstadt changing on and Mittelstadt beat Justus Annunen with a wrist shot from the top of the left circle.
Boston controlled the early flow, but the second goal didn’t arrive until a Nashville mistake handed the Bruins a power play at 16:38. Nicolas Hague held Pastrnak behind the net, and 15 seconds later Elias Lindholm was alone in front to redirect McAvoy’s shot home for his fourth of the season.
The Bruins held a 12-8 edge in shots after one, while DiPietro kept the Predators off the board with a quiet opening period. The workload picked up in the second, and he answered every test. He turned aside back-to-back looks from Nils Hoglander, then bailed out a neutral-zone breakdown by stopping Mavrik Bourque on a clean break-in and the rebound attempt from Alexander Kerfoot.
That stretch could have given Nashville a foothold. Instead, Boston slammed the door.
At 9:48 of the second, McAvoy set up Pastrnak for Boston’s third goal when his hard wrister was tipped in for Pastrnak’s fifth of the season. Then, at 17:25, the Bruins buried the game for good.
After McAvoy delivered a heavy hit on Jack Drury in the defensive zone, Pastrnak sent a perfect slap pass to JJ Peterka on the rush. Peterka’s first redirection rang off the post, but the puck bounced right back to him and he finished for his fourth.
From there, the only real suspense was whether DiPietro would get the shutout. The answer kept getting closer as Boston kept adding to the lead.
At 6:50, Matt Poitras dumped the puck in and it took a fortunate bounce off the end boards straight to Mark Kastelic, who beat Annunen with a backhander to make it 5-0. Pastrnak then added another late to close out the scoring and finish off a night that belonged entirely to the Bruins.
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