In Boston, the Bruins scored three times in the first period to take a 3-0 lead into the second period on Saturday afternoon en route to a 6-2 win over the New York Islanders. 
Boston added three more goals in the middle frame to make it an early decision.
Jake DeBrusk scored in the first period to open the scoring and give the Bruins a 1-0 lead, he missed 17 games for an injury.
“I’ve been waiting for this day for a while,” DeBrusk said. “I just wanted to get a goal. I just wanted to get [the] first one. It was a great play by ‘Marchy’ (Brad Marchand) to get that. Even after the goal, it felt a little bit weird to be out there for different times.”
Nick Foligno scored in the first, and Trent Frederic hit for the first of his two on the night, in the opening frame.
“Something we talked about, at the start of the year, was being a real hard team at home,” Foligno said. “Being a hard place to play, we wanted to get back to that today, so I was really proud of the guys against a heavy team. Everyone plays back to backs in this league, so I don’t buy that excuse anymore. We had to play well to play this team. They’re a heavy, hard team too, and we got the job done today.”
The Isles got one back early in the middle frame for a 3-1 count on a marker from Kyle Palmieri.
“I think we were maybe a little bit on our heels,” Palmieri said. “[We] put ourselves on the penalty kill. Obviously, that’s a pretty dangerous power play over there. They score, they’re at home, Saturday night, it’s a bit of a momentum shift. It’s on us to kind of grab it back there. [We] weren’t able to do it.”
New York dropped to 28-24-7.
“It seemed like every time we made a mistake, it ended up in the back of our net,” New York coach Lane Lambert said. “[Boston] obviously has the ability to do that. We didn’t make a ton of mistakes. … The scoring chances throughout were fairly equal, but we came out on the wrong end of it.
The Bruins were merciless in their response, scoring three times in the second period.
Patrice Bergeron was the first to score to make it, 4-1, to the Bruins.
“It’s one of those things where I’m glad it went in, but then that being said, you kind of move on to the next play,” Bergeron said. “We’re playing with some great players. It’s been a special year in a lot of ways and [I’m] just thankful to be a part of it.”
Frederic hit for his double at 11:30 for a 5-1 count., and Pavel Zacha scored with 89 seconds left in the second for a 6-1 advantage to Boston.
“There’s a lot of times in the season where you have the advantage, and sometimes you’re at the disadvantage,” Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said. “I think that first period is how you want to play when you have a team playing on back to backs.”
New York got back on the board in the third with a strike from Matt Martin for the 6-2 final.
Semyon Varlamov made 21 saves in the Islanders loss.
“We definitely could have made the game easier on ourselves, especially early on,” Martin said. “We just got to move on from this one. We got another big one on Monday against Pittsburgh.”
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