The Bruins didn’t exactly come out firing again, but they knew how to finish again.
Boston shook off another sluggish start and pulled away late for a 4-1 win over the Kings in Los Angeles, wrapping up a three-game sweep of California and stretching its winning streak to five games. The Bruins are now 7-2, and they’ve made a habit of taking control when the game gets late, outscoring opponents 16-5 in the third period this season.
They’ll have two days off before closing out the four-game road trip against the Dallas Stars on Tuesday. That trip ends with what figures to be their toughest test yet.
“You’re seeing a team never giving up. It doesn’t matter how bad we start sometimes.
Whether we’re behind a goal or two, we just keep playing our game,” coach Marco Sturm told NESN. “Each period we’re just getting better and better.
Goaltending is a big key to our success but it was just another great team effort and that’s the Boston Bruins right there.”
Jeremy Swayman did his part again, stopping 25 shots and improving to 6-1. Boston needed him early, because the Kings came out fast after four days off and struck just 31 seconds in. Swayman turned away the initial redirected try, but he couldn’t control the rebound, and Adrian Kempe jumped on it before setting up Alex Laferriere, who beat Nikita Zadorov replacement Jonathan Aspirot to the net for the opening goal.
Aspirot had been inserted because Sturm scratched Zadorov, who was sitting out after the undisciplined double minor he took on Friday in Anaheim. With Pavel Zacha out day-to-day because of an upper-body issue, that also opened the door for Aspirot and Sean Kuraly to return after both had been scratched for the previous five games.
Boston spent much of the first period on its heels, getting outshot 12-6, but the Bruins still managed to keep the deficit to one. They also showed some pushback when Mark Kastelic took exception to a hit on Tanner Jeannot and dropped the gloves with Samuel Helenius, coming out on top in the scrap with the 6-foot-6 King forward.
The Bruins couldn’t do anything with a late power play that spilled into the second period, but they did cash in on a break soon after. At 2:43, Erik Gustafsson fumbled a puck in the neutral zone, David Pastrnak seized on the mistake, carried it into the right side of the offensive zone and snapped a far-side wrister past Anton Forsberg for his fourth goal of the season to tie it 1-1.
From there, the game stayed tied through the middle frames. Boston had another power play, Los Angeles got its first chance, and neither side finished the job.
Pastrnak’s goal was only the start of Boston’s better looks as the night went on. Sturm adjusted his lines in the third period, flipping Joe Peterka and Morgan Geekie, and the Bruins began spending more time in the offensive zone.
Fraser Minten had started the night between Pastrnak and Geekie, while Poitras centered Khusnutdinov and Peterka. But the real damage came from the group that had been working all night.
With 6:24 left in regulation, Boston finally broke through. After Jonathan Aspirot started the sequence with a clean breakout pass, the Bruins advanced into the LA zone and Matt Poitras dropped the puck to Geekie, who fired a shot Forsberg stopped but couldn’t secure. Poitras sliced through the Kings defenders, got to the top of the crease and redirected the rebound over to Marat Khusnutdinov, who tapped it in for his second goal of the season.
“Great line work,” said Khusnutdinov, one of the hardest working Bruins. “Shoot the puck, go to the net. Good bounce.”
Poitras, who moved up in the lineup Saturday because Zacha was unavailable, kept making his case. He now has three points in his last three games, and every one of them has mattered.
“Just trying to go to the net. The game was pretty tight and it was going to take a greasy one,” said Poitras of the game-winning play.
After matching penalties and once the Kings pulled Forsberg, Elias Lindholm added an empty-net goal with 1:58 left on a soft shot from beyond his own blue line. JJ Peterka scored another empty-netter to close out the scoring.
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