PITTSBURGH (AP) — Brandon Sutter and Jussi Jokinen scored 6:58 apart in the third period and the Pittsburgh Penguins held on for a 3-2 victory over the Boston Bruins on Wednesday night.
Chris Kunitz also scored for the Penguins, who gained a small measure of revenge on the Bruins after Boston swept them out of the playoffs last spring.
Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 21 shots for Pittsburgh, including a sliding save on David Krejci just before the final horn. Sidney Crosby picked up an assist to push his points total to an NHL-high 21.
Patrice Bergeron and Jarome Iginla scored for Boston. Tuukka Rask finished with 28 saves, but couldn’t stop the Bruins from dropping a road game for the first time this season.
“We didn’t play to our identity,” Bruins coach Claude Julien said. “We didn’t play a heavy game for two periods tonight. We had to play three periods like we did in the third and that wasn’t the case.”
The meeting between the teams was the first since Boston’s emphatic fourgame sweep in the Eastern Conference finals, when the Bruins suffocated the NHL’s highest scoring team into submission. The Penguins scored only twice in nearly 14 periods of hockey and never led at any point, undone by Boston’s defense and a near flawless performance by Rask.
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