The Bruins didn’t waste any time turning a tight road game into a rout Thursday night in Pittsburgh.
Boston spotted the Penguins the first goal at PPG Paints Arena, then ripped off three straight before the first period ended and never let the game get close again in a 6-2 win. The Bruins improved to 12-4-1, while Pittsburgh dropped to 5-9-2.
Pavel Zacha led the way with two goals, and both of them came with help from David Pastrnak and JJ Peterka. Morgan Geekie kept his scoring run going by finding the net for a third straight game, and Fraser Minten added one late as Boston piled on. Mark Kastelic also scored in his return to the lineup, with Frederic Brunet setting him up on the play.
Michael DiPietro stopped 16 shots to earn his fourth straight win, while Arturs Silovs made 18 saves for Pittsburgh in the loss.
Boston opened with pressure, jumping to a 4-0 edge in shots over the first nine minutes before the scoring finally started. Ex-Bruin Justin Brazeau put the Penguins up 1-0 on Pittsburgh’s first shot of the game, but the lead didn’t last long. Zacha answered three minutes later after a clean feed from Pastrnak.
From there, the Bruins kept coming. Tanner Jeannot and Sean Kuraly worked a puck loose off an offensive-zone faceoff, Brunet fired toward goal, and Kastelic got a tip on it for the 2-1 edge. Then, with a little more than a minute left in the opening period, Elias Lindholm forced a turnover from Erik Karlsson with hard forechecking, then beat Silovs to make it 3-1.
Pittsburgh got a brief push early in the second and cut the margin to 3-2 on a Nick Robertson deflection. Boston answered the pressure instead of absorbing it. With just over five minutes left in the period, Peterka and Zacha broke out on a two-on-one, and Peterka fed Zacha for his second goal of the night.
A couple minutes later, Hampus Lindholm sent Geekie in alone, and Geekie lifted a shot over Silovs’ glove to make it 5-2. That score held into the third, where the Penguins offered little resistance.
The only real flashpoint after that came when Sam Girard delivered a cross-check that knocked James Hagens out of the rest of the game with an injury. Boston kept pressing anyway, and Minten finished off a 2-on-1 after a strong spring pass from Geekie.
By the end, the Bruins had a scoreline that matched the night: controlled, relentless, and one-sided.
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