Bruins thrash Tampa, 7-3 Three goals in third ease Bruins into the win

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In Boston, the Bruins took a slim 4-3 lead over the Tampa Bay Lightning into the third period on Saturday, and posted three markers in the third to take a 7-3 win.

Linus Ullmark made 23 saves in the win.

“I really liked our third period. I thought we were smart,” Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said. “We didn’t give up an odd-man rush. We had numbers everywhere, and we kept hanging on to pucks in the offensive zone, making them defend so they didn’t have much energy to go the other way.”

Boston improved to 24-8-6.

Brayden Point staked the Lightning to a 1-0 lead with 21 seconds of game fresh ice used. The goal was his first of a pair on the night.

Trent Frederic scored the first of his double, off the power play, at 4:42 to tie the game, 1-1.

“Both power-play [units] were moving it really well,” Frederic said. “I’m just in front, so I was just standing there, but they were moving it well. ‘Shatty’ made a great play, and I was fortunate it just got up over [Vasilevskiy].”

Boston’s Charlie McAvoy pushed the Bruins into the lead, 2-1 at 14:56.

Frederic picked up his double at 1:49 of the middle frame for a 3-1 advantage to the Bruins.

Tampa dropped to 19-17-5 off their fourth loss in their last six fixtures.

“Penalties hurt us early, kind of took the wind out of our sails,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “We got ourselves back. I don’t know, it was a weird game. A lot of weird pucks going in the net. … Boston’s a heck of a team, but I don’t know, for us, we felt that could have been a winnable game, and you look up at the scoreboard and it’s 7-3. So, a little bit of a headshaker for me.”

Nikita Kucherov trimed the deficit to 3-2 at 7:53 of the second.

“Aside from letting in seven, I don’t think we really played that bad,” the Lightning’s Calvin de Haan said. “You look at it after the game and you see the score, obviously you want to win, but I think we did some good things. I think there’s some things we can build on at the end of the day.”

Boston replied just 30 seconds later with a marker from David Pastrnak to make it 4-2 off a breakaway goal.

“We tried to come back and we just kept giving up goals,” Tampa’s Brandon Hagel said. “So, you’ve got to be able to respond a little bit better than that and carry the momentum over instead of making mistakes and letting them just make it harder on us.”

Point picked up his double at 15:53.of the second to make it 4-3 headed to the third.

“I think we did a really good job kind of keeping things simple and keeping them on the outside,” said Bruins forward Matthew Poitras, who had two assists. “They’ve got [a lot] of skilled guys over there, so we did a good job just trying to contain them.”

The third period ice was tilted in Boston;s favor with Morgan Geekie scoring at 1:35 for a 5-3 lead.

“I saw [Pastrnak] out of the side of my eye when Hampus [Lindholm] had it, so I figured that’s who he was trying to pass it to,” Geekie said. “‘Pasta’ made a great play to draw the defender in, and I just tried to get a shot off as fast as I could.”

Boston potted two more markers with Jake DeBrusk hitting a shorthanded, empty-net strike at 16:34, and Charlie Coyle adding salt to the wound at 17:14 for the 7-3 final count.

Andrei Vasilevskiy made 20 saves in the loss.