The Bruins (15-4-3) snapped their three-game losing streak by shutting out their toothless visitors from San Jose, 3-0, Thursday night at TD Garden.
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This was not the same type of shark sighting New Englanders from Boothbay to the Bourne Bridge must worry about from the Fourth of July to Labor Day.
No, when the West Coast Sharks come East, officials can put away the warning signs (think: “Beach Closed by order of Amity, P.D.”) and replace them with welcome mats.
The Bruins (15-4-3) snapped their three-game losing streak by shutting out their toothless visitors from San Jose, 3-0, Thursday night at TD Garden.
The Sharks (5-16-2) have yet to win on the road this season.
After an opening 20 minutes where they barely kept their heads above water, the Bruins came out flying and feisty in the second, looking more like the team that has been atop the NHL standings most of this season and less like the club that looked sleepy and sloppy in losses to the Red Wings, Rangers, and Blue Jackets.
“You give up 17 goals in three games and we didn’t look anything like ourselves,” said coach Jim Montgomery. “It was good to see us look like ourselves without the puck in all three zones.”
They checked, they scored, and they fought.
Sometimes it’s a fiery speech from a coach that can shake a team out its doldrums. That was not the case in this one.
“I’d like to believe I said something that invigorated them and made them better,” said Montgomery. “But we weren’t happy with our first. We didn’t like our compete level in the first and the players took it upon themselves to raise their level.”
Danton Heinen,
freshly installed on the right wing with center Matt Poitras and Brad Marchand, got the offense going. Poitras did a spin-o-rama move to keep a defender at bay and slid the puck to a surging Heinen, who one-touched a dart past Mackenzie Blackwood for the 1-0 lead, Boston’s first since Thanksgiving Eve in Florida.
Some quick passing allowed the Bruins to extend their lead to 2-0.
Brandon Carlo picked off a pass and shuffled the puck to David Pastrnak, who tapped it to Pavel Zacha. The center took two strides and delivered a pass to Jake DeBrusk, who sneaked behind the Sharks’ defense and sneaked a nifty backhander under Blackwood’s pads.
Then things got edgy.
Poitras took a high stick from Kyle Burroughs and in the same sequence Marchand was boarded by Givani Smith.
Derek Forbort decked Smith in retaliation and was given a roughing minor. Forbort glared at Smith while both were in the box, but they chose not to reengage when they were freed.
Trent Frederic was not so forgiving.
The big Bruins winger went at with Smith and after absorbing a few blows early, took down the 6-foot-4-inch, 232-pound Shark with a flurry of haymakers.
To Frederic, revenge was a no-brainer.
“You don’t want people hitting Marchy — he’s our captain,” Frederic said. “Everyone loves him here and he’s obviously a great player. You don’t want him getting hit like that.”
The rough stuff didn’t stop there.
Marchand and Fabian Zetterlund traded blows just before the end of the second period, which set up a crowded house in the Bruins’ penalty box to start the third.
Zacha iced the game when he roofed a backhander off a nice give-and-go from Pastrnak with San Jose’s Matt Benning in the box for slashing.
Kind of lost in the excitement and the scoring was the steady play of Jeremy Swayman, who bounced back from his benching in Columbus with 28 saves, good for his 11th career shutout in his 100th career game.
“That’s exactly what I wanted to do is make sure I’m keeping the puck out of the net,” he said. “It feels good, but at the same time plenty to work on still and you want to use this as a momentum piece moving forward.”
