It can not possibly make up for what happened on the TD Garden Ice back in June, but the Boston Bruins were at least able to get some satisfaction against the St. Louis Blues on Saturday night with a 3-0 shutout win over the defending Stanley Cup champions in what was their first meeting since Game 7.
The two big stars of the games for the Bruins were -- as they have been all season -- winger David Pastrnak and starting goalie Tuukka Rask.
Rask turned aside all 26 shots he faced for his second shutout of the season. The Bruins have now earned 11 out of a possible 12 points in the games he has started as he continues his incredible start and pushes his save percentage to an almost unbelievable .951 mark.
But even when your goalie is stopping almost every shot you still need somebody to score some goals if you want to win, and right now nobody is doing that better than Pastrnak.
He opened the scoring on the power play on Saturday night by one-timing a slap shot from the left circle that beat Blues goalie Jordan Binnington for his 11th goal of the season. That goal extends his current goal-scoring streak to five consecutive games and gives him at least one goal in seven of his past eight.
How good is his start? This is just the 29th time since the 1979-80 season that a player has scored at least 11 goals through their team’s first 10 games, while it is just the fifth time since 1993 (the other four: Scott Young 2000, Ilya Kovalchuk in 2003, Alexander Steen in 2013, and Nikita Kucherov in 2018). Even taking into account the fact that his shooting percentage is eventually going to dip well below the 30 percent mark it is currently at this season he should still have a fighting chance to hit the 50-goal mark this season and challenge for the league lead.
With 11 goals and 18 total points he has now figured into the scoring on 62 percent of the Bruins’ goals this season.
Anders Bjork and Brandon Carlo also added goals for the Bruins on Saturday to help them improve to 7-1-2 on the season.
—
Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.