BOSTON — Boston’s power play finally came through with two early goals Tuesday night.

The other side of the Bruins’ special teams unit delivered in the end.

Gregory Campbell scored the winner with less than 10 minutes remaining and the Bruins fended off a late 4-minute San Jose power play to earn a wild 5-3 win over the Sharks.

“Our special teams tonight were really good for us and we really needed that against that team,” said Boston Coach Claude Julien.

After twice squandering one-goal leads and overcoming a late deficit, the Bruins took the lead for good when Campbell tipped a pass from Daniel Paille through the legs of San Jose goaltender Antti Niemi with 9:18 left to play.

But Patrice Bergeron drew a double-minor penalty with 4:09 remaining, leaving the Bruins short-handed against one of the best power-play units on the road this season.

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San Jose had converted on 5 of 15 chances entering the game, and added another one in the first period Tuesday.

“Bergy kills enough penalties for us,” Campbell said, “so it’s important for us to do that for him.”

Goaltender Tuukka Rask and Boston staved off the Sharks’ attack before David Krejci added an empty-netter with 24.5 seconds to go to seal the Bruins’ third win in four games.

“It’s pretty huge from our group, especially when one of your best penalty killers is in the box for the last four minutes,” Julien said. “I thought our guys the last four minutes did an unbelievable job of battling through.”

Boston got contributions from nearly half of its roster, as nine players recorded at least one point.

Brad Marchand and Torey Krug scored power-play goals, Seth Griffith scored his first career NHL goal and Milan Lucic had three assists. Rask made 31 saves.

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“You’ve got to have everybody going because that’s a deep team, a team that competes in a pretty tough conference,” Campbell said. “It helps when everybody can chip in.”

Logan Couture had two goals and Joe Thornton scored against his former team as San Jose finished its East Coast trip at 2-2-1.

“We moved it around we just didn’t get many good looks,” Couture said of the final four minutes. “When we had a shot, the puck bounced on us. We didn’t get pucks through and I don’t even know if we got a good quality scoring chance.

“The power play needed to get us one there and it let the team down.”

The Bruins came into the game ranked 20th in the league on the power play, converting on just 3 of 22 opportunities.


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