In Boston, Linus Ullmark made 17 saves in 4-0 win for the Bruins over the visiting Vancouver Canucks on Thursday night.
The loss ended the Canucks 12-game point streak.
“I was very impressed [with the defensive effort],” Ullmark said. “We said that beforehand that it wasn’t tolerable to do what we did last game (a 4-1 loss to the Calgary Flames on Tuesday), and the guys really took it to heart. We came out there flying. Obviously, you see [Brad Marchand], he goes out there and scores a highlight-reel goal, and after that we just kept on going.”
Boston improved to 32-10-9.
“[We] didn’t give up odd-man rushes,” Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said. “I think that was the most pleasant thing because when you’re with a lead, you don’t want to give them opportunities to get back in it either by taking penalties or giving up odd-man rushes, and I liked the way we continued to hang on to pucks in the offensive zone.”
The Bruins took control of the game in the opening stanza and never released it.
Brad Marchand staked Boston to a 1-0 lead with 32 seconds gone in the first.
“I need to make a better play there,” Demko said. “I was trying to just get it over to [Quinn Hughes], I just put a little too much mustard on it. It’s an unfortunate play by me, so I take responsibility for it.”
Danton Heinen pushed the lead to 2-0 at 15:37.
“Our penalty kill hasn’t been up to par from where we started this year,” Coyle said. “So that, to me, we wanted to get better at. You’re not looking to score on the [penalty kill]. When the time is right, the opportunity presents itself. You jump to those, but it just happened to work out that way because I think we’re playing the right way.”
Vancouver dropped to 34-12-5.
“It’s our first [regulation] loss in a while, so if you’re going to lose, I guess you’re going to throw a dud. That was a dud,” Canucks coach Rick Tocchet said. “I mean, two short-handed goals [allowed], you can’t have that. It’s obviously a learning lesson.”
In the middle frame, the Bruins scored twice in a 15-second span to put the game out of reach.
The two goals were scored in the first minute of the second period.
Morgan Geekie hit for the first of the pair at 34 seconds into the middle frame for a 3-0 advantage to Boston.
“It’s a good challenge for us to kind of battle test us here,” Bruins defenseman Hampus Lindholm said. “We talk about the process here, it’s just one hockey game. We look forward to more training and getting to the next game, but of course [Vancouver’s] a really good hockey team, so we played them really well.”
Pavel Zacha stretched the lead to 4-0 at the 49 second mark of the period.
Thatcher Demko made 21 saves in the loss.
“Credit to [the Bruins], they stuck to their game,” Hughes said. “But also, I mean, we can’t give them two short-handed goals and then the two goals that we gave them in the second are kind of our own mistakes. So they didn’t do anything necessarily too [well], it was just us shooting [ourselves] in the foot.”
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