BOSTON — The Bruins victory on Thursday at TD Garden was not their most dazzling of the year, but it might have been their most hard-fought win.
Playing a Calgary Flames team that needed a win, the Bruins survived a stifling checking game and six Calgary power plays to come away with their eighth home victory in as many tries. Charlie McAvoy, in his first game of the season, gave the Bruins the lead late in the second and they held on for the 3-1 win. David Pastrnak finished it off with an empty-netter.
Linus Ullmark (10-1) continued his Vezina-level play, stopping 31 of 32 shots to nail down the victory.
If a team can be desperate in November, the Flames were just that. Believed to be a contender in the West at the start of the season, Calgary had lost their six previous games (0-4-2) and were without one of their big offseason acquisitions in Jonathan Huberdeau (upper body).
And they frankly took it to the Bruins in the first 10 minutes of the game, getting the first six shots on net in the game and taking a 1-0 lead at 4:43, one second after Connor Clifton stepped out of the penalty box. With a screen in front, Noah Hanifin was able to sneak a wrister over Ullmark’s glove shoulder for the advantage.
It was just the second time in eight home games that the Bruins allowed the first goal.
The Calgary lead didn’t last the period. Clifton scored his first goal of the year with an assist from Nick Foligno that didn’t show up on the scoresheet. Milan Lucic blasted Pastrnak behind the net and Foligno went right back at him, gave the former Bruin a little shove and then headed to the front of the net. There, he tied up defenseman Dennis Gilbert to allow Clifton to gather a rebound of his own shot to score at 16:38.
The shots were 13-13 in the first, but if not for another former Bruin, Dan Vladar, the Bruins could have had a couple more. The lanky Vladar, whose Bruin future was ended when Ullmark was signed two summers ago, made two nice separate pad saves, one on Pavel Zacha and another on Jake DeBrusk.
Meanwhile, Ullmark was both good and lucky to start the second period, when the Flames got a couple of early power plays. On the first one, Andrew Mangiapane had a wide open net after Ullmark made an initial save, but he hit the near post from the left side. Then Dillon Dube had a clean break-in, but Ullmark smothered his backhander.
Ullmark’s good fortune continued on the Flames’ third power play in the period when Tyler Toffli missed another open net from the left side of the cage.
The Bruins had just one shot on net by the time they got their first power play of the period with 5:50 left. The Bruins could not beat Vladar on that power play, nor could they score on the one they got immediately after that one.
But just four seconds after Dube left the box, McAvoy made his presence felt. Playing in his first game of the season after offseason shoulder surgery, McAvoy gave the Bruins their first lead of the game at 18:27 of the second. With the Flames still in penalty killing scramble mode, McAvoy took a nice pass from Zacha and beat Vladar with his patented slingshot wrister from out high for the 2-1 lead heading into the third. And again, Foligno was parked at the top of the crease.
