The breeze you may have felt around 9:45 p.m. might have been from some 18,000 people collectively exhaling on Causeway Street on Thursday night.
After racing out to a 4-0 lead in the first two periods, off the strength of three goals in 54 seconds in the first period, the Bruins survived by their fingernails a third period push from the Vegas Golden Knights and escaped the Garden with a 4-3 victory.
The Knights, thoroughly outplayed in the the opening 40 minutes, outshot the B’s 20-5 in the third period and scored three unanswered goals. But they needed to get four, and the B’s squeaked out the two points.
Joonas Korpisalo turned away 29 shots — over half of which came in the third — to nail down the victory.
This one looked like a Bruin romp at first.
And when Tomas Hertl was called for a double minor for high-sticking at 9:01, the B’s took full advantage of it. Eleven seconds after Hertl took a seat in the box, Charlie McAvoy’s one-timer from out high beat netminder Akira Schmid for his fourth of the year.
With the B’s still on the power play, they doubled the lead just 30 seconds later. David Pastrnak found Elias Lindholm in the slot and the centerman scored his ninth of the year over Schmid’s blocker.
The team’s went back to even strength, but the B’s were not done.
Tanner Jeannot created a turnover in the Vegas zone, poking it free from defenseman Ben Hutton, and Sean Kuraly pounced on the loose puck. Kuraly fed it back down to Jeannot and, from the left wing, Jeannot beat Schmid to the short side with a snipe at 10:06 for Jeannot’s fifth.
The B’s were skating downhill at this point and Mark Kastelic absolutely laid out Shea Theodore along the end boards. At that juncture, the Knights had to respond and old friend Jeremy Lauzon dropped the gloves with Kastelic. To the crowd’s disappointment, Kastelic lost his balance before any real shots were thrown and the linesmen stepped in to end it.
The B’s, who held a 15-4 shot advantage, nearly took a 4-0 lead but Schmid made a great blocker save on Zacha in the waning moments of the first.
Though the Knights came out with a little more purpose in the second, Pastrnak (21) did get that fourth goal at 7:25 of the second when Nikita Zadorov showed off both his brawn and skill.
From the left side of the neutral zone, Pastrnak tossed an area pass down the right wing that Zadorov chased down. With the 6-foot-3, 220-pound Hertl bearing down on him, Zadorov dropped him with a wave of his arm as he protected the puck and backhanded a pass back to Pastrnak, who ripped it past a helpless Schmid.
The explosive Knights made things a little uneasy when they were able to get on the board just 31 seconds into the third, when one Boston area homeboy, Noah Hanifin (Norwood), fed another Jack Eichel (North Chelmsford, to make it 4-1.
Then they cut it to a two-goal deficit at 3:01 on a power play with Marat Khusnutdinov in the box for roughing, with Hertl scoring from the slot.
Things got really tight when, 45 seconds later, Jonathan Aspirot took an interference penalty. But the B’s were able to survive that one.
The Knights kept pushing though, dominating, and got to within one with 2:35 left in regulation after Schmid was pulled with 3:14 left in the third when Pavel Dorofeyev scored.
But that’s as close as the Knights would get.
