Bruins deliver most complete team effort of season in huge win over Wild

Facing one of the NHL's most complete teams on Saturday, the Bruins banded together and earned a complete team win.

Getting contributions up and down the lineup, in all three zones, plays big and small, the Bruins vanquished the formidable Minnesota Wild at TD Garden, building multiple comfortable leads and holding off a late rally in the process. Pavel Zacha's line led the way offensively, as they have many times throughout the season, while the defensemen chipped in key plays at both ends of the ice and Jeremy Swayman made a number of high-difficulty saves to keep the B's comfortable for much of the game. Perhaps most impressive was the way the Bruins largely limited the Wild from burning them with their speed, which they boast both up front and on the blue line.

It took a layered approach to make that possible. The forwards committed to keeping the puck deep in Minnesota's zone as often as they could, the back end played a responsible game, and Swayman was often there to be the last line of defense when trouble arose. Zacha's first of his two goals in the second period summed up the way they played in front of Swayman: Jonathan Aspirot blocks a shot, Casey Mittelstadt fishes out the loose puck for a quick breakout, Viktor Arvidsson gets a rush going and finds an open Zacha, and No. 18 finishes it off.

"It was a complete 60-minute effort," said head coach Marco Sturm. "Every line brought something to the table. Could be a fight, could be assists, could be goals, whatever it is, 'Sway' in net, outstanding again. That's who we are, and that's what I liked the most."

The Bruins set the tone for this one early on, as the line of Marat Khusnutdinov, Fraser Minten, and David Pastrnak quickly got their forecheck cooking deep in the Wild's end. They shrunk Minnesota's coverage with their pressure, which gave defenseman Andrew Peeke the space to gather a loose puck along the half boards and fire a shot past netminder Filip Gustavsson to put the B's up 1-0 just 61 seconds into the game. After Zacha's first goal, the Bruins maintained a lead of at least two goals for nearly 40 minutes, before the Wild's Ryan Hartman batted a rebound out of mid-air to make it a 4-3 game with 6:16 left in regulation.

But much like they did after going down late in Buffalo, the Bruins responded. They won the next three faceoffs in a row, and the Wild landed just one shot on goal over the next three minutes, before Zacha tipped Mittelstadt's turnaround shot attempt in for his second goal of the game to go back up by two. Zacha scored both his goals by attacking the danger areas and getting to good ice, and he's winning pucks in his own end too, as he continues to build on what's become a new career-best season for him, as the engine of the Bruins' most productive overall forward group.

"He's scoring a lot of goals, but his 200-foot game is unbelievable, and I think he helps our team up and down the ice, and his battles in the D zone," Arvidsson said of Zacha. "The trust from me and Casey there, we know he's gonna do everything he can to win the battle and come out with the puck. So, we can kind of read off that. He's been unbelievable all year."

Speaking of 200-foot game, the Bruins got that out of their top defensive pairing in Aspirot and Charlie McAvoy. They blocked three shots each on defense, while McAvoy tied for the team lead with four shots on goal and sparked Elias Lindholm's first of his two goals with a decisive, accurate attempt from the point. The B's generated 59.5% of shot attempts at 5-on-5 when McAvoy was on the ice.

Despite their efforts, the Wild are a tough team to silence for 60 full minutes. They showed signs of life when defenseman Brock Faber landed a stretch pass that sparked a rush that ended with the puck in the back of the net, and they cashed in on a 5-on-3 opportunity after Khusnutdinov and Nikita Zadorov committed simultaneous penalties. But Swayman held strong when the time called for it, as he stopped 8 of 9 high-danger shots (.889), easily above his season rate of .780 entering the game.

The Bruins have a first-year head coach and have pieced together a roster mix of young, inexperienced players and veterans, most of which on short-term deals. They knew as well as anyone the kind of performance they'd have to give on a nightly basis to elevate their status abover borderline playoff team.

As of Sunday, they're beyond borderline. Their chief competition in the wild card race, the Columbus Blue Jackets, lost in regulation Saturday to drop three points behind the Bruins, as a massive Sunday clash looms. The B's are in a tough spot to head on the road for the second leg of a back-to-back against the team they need to fend off, but they have a huge throat-stepping opportunity in front of them in Columbus.

Even so, the Ottawa Senators also lost in regulation, dropping them four points back. As of this writing, the Detroit Red Wings, also four points behind, are losing their Saturday contest against the Philadelphia Flyers.

The Bruins are in good shape for a potential playoff berth, but they still have nine games to go and the opponents are no walk in the park. But Saturday showed that, if they get meaningful contributions across the board and across the full sheet of ice, they're a threat to get two points regardless of who's on the opposing bench.

“I think every game is important," Zacha said. "Now we have back-to-back, big game tomorrow. You have to refocus and just win as many as we can. We have a good-enough team to make the playoffs, we just have to show it every night and win games.”