In Tampa, David Pastrnak scored twice in the opening period on Saturday, and Brad Marchand added a double as well as the Boston Bruins downed the Lightning, 5-2.
“He’s such a dominant player, I think he holds himself to a high standard,” Marchand said of Pastrnak. “He wants to be a difference-maker every night. He’s such a special talent. We want to see him do well. It’s great to see him have a game like tonight. He steps up in big situations all the time.”
Linus Ullmark made 27 saves in the Bruins win.
“It’s always fun to play the best teams in the League, because you really have to be sharp and be on point with everything you’re doing,” Ullmark said. “It’s a test of your game and tests your mental fortitude. That’s what we play for. We play to be the best, and if you want to be that, you have to beat the best.”
Boston improved to 18-11-2.
Marchand’s first goal push the Bruins advantage to 3-0 early in the second period.
“It feels good, but I don’t think they played their best game tonight,” Marchand said. “We’ve played them plenty in the past, we know when they’re on and when they’re not. So we have to take it as a grain of salt, but it’s definitely something we can continue to build on. We’ve been a lot better recently. Ever since the Christmas break we’ve been playing really good hockey.”
Ondrej Palat and Brayden Point were the Tampa strikers.
“They were better than us tonight,” Tampa Bay head coach Jon Cooper said. “We’ve played them twice now, it’s 1-1 (won 3-2 in overtime on Dec. 4). They probably … they were better than us in Boston and they were better than us tonight. We had some chances, but when you’re down by four, it’s a tough road back.”
The Lightning dropped to 23-9-5.
Anton Blidh added a single marker for Boston, his goal gave the Bruins a 4-0 lead in the second.
“There was a lot to like,” Boston coach Bruce Cassidy said. “I think our puck battles … I think a lot of goals were generated by winning pucks to the wall, playing north, minimizing mistakes in terms of them getting easy chances. I guess that’s what I liked best about our game, we played a hard to play against type of style tonight.”
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 25 saves in the Bolts loss.
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