Marat Khusnutdinov broke a 1-1 deadlock late in the third period, then the B’s added two empty-netters to beat the Kings in Los Angeles, 4-1.
The win completed a perfect California swing and extended the Bruins winning streak to five games.
Jeremy Swayman made 25 saves in victory, while the Kings are left still searching for their first win of the season.
The Kings got on the board 30 seconds into the game, with Alex Laferriere tapping the puck in from the top of the crease before many people had found their seats. 1-0 Kings.
That would be the only goal of the first period. Early in the second, David Pastrnak took advantage of a Kings misplay at the blue line to go the other way and cleanly beat Anton Forsberg to make it a 1-1 game.
In a similar vein to the game’s opening goal, Khusnutdinov’s goal was a crease-top tap-in that made it 2-1 Bruins 13:36 into the third period.
The Kings pulled Forsberg, but Elias Lindholm got an empty-netter with two minutes left, then JJ Peterka added another with 18 seconds left to wrap things up.
Bruins win, 4-1.
Game notes
- If you missed this game and just saw the scoreline, you could be forgiven for thinking this was a runaway Bruins win. However, this was a one-goal or tie game for about 90% of the evening, with the empty-netters make things appear more lopsided than they were.
- Unfortunately for the Kings, they now stand alone atop the winless podium: the Philadelphia Flyers got their first win of the season on Saturday night, beating the Ottawa Senators. One is the loneliest number, etc.
- Khusnutdinov made a good hustle play along the boards prior to Lindholm’s empty-net goal. His initial toss out of the zone was knocked down, but he managed to knock the puck out of the zone and right to Lindholm with a diving effort.
- Both teams put up o-fers on the power play, coming up empty on two chances apiece.
- Pavel Zacha missed this game due to injury, with Sean Kuraly drawing back into the lineup. Zacha’s absence led to Fraser Minten playing on the first line and Matt Poitras moving to the second line.
- Nikita Zadorov was a DNP-Coach’s Decision, reportedly as discipline for his double-minor in the Anaheim game. While Zadorov has had his issues with penalties, it seems like a bit of a harsh reaction from Marco Sturm, unless this is something that has already been stressed to the defenseman as an area of concern. We now have his agent chiming in on Twitter, so that’s fun.
After a perfect trip to the Golden State, the Bruins will be off on Sunday and will travel to Texas, where they’ll face the Dallas Stars on Tuesday.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
