The Bruins surged ahead early against the Carolina Hurricanes and then relied on their penalty-killers to earn a 4-1 victory on Monday night.
Beginning with its 2010-11 Stanley Cup championship season, Boston is 100-6-6 in games it has taken a twogoal lead. It took the Bruins about 10 minutes to establish the margin against Carolina, which had won five of seven in the series.
Boston killed four Carolina penalties, including 63 seconds when down two skaters, to extend its streak of consecutive penalty kills to 32.
“It’s commitment,” Boston coach Claude Julien said. “Most of all, we’re winning battles. We’re doing a good job of standing teams up.”
That wasn’t the case in late October when Boston allowed goals on five consecutive power plays.
“We were really awful on the (penalty kill), which is really unusual for us,” said Tuukka Rask, who made 23 saves. “We wanted to go back to basics, killing one penalty at a time.”
Reilly Smith and Carl Soderberg had a goal and an assist each in the first period. Johnny Boychuk scored midway through the third, and Milan Lucic added an empty-net goal for Boston, which has 11 points in seven games (5-1-1).
Carolina’s Tuomo Ruutu scored his first goal of the season with 4.8 seconds left in the opening period, but Boston didn’t waver.
NOTES: Boston defenseman Adam McQuaid missed his fourth consecutive game. … The teams will meet again Saturday in Boston. … The announced attendance was 13,919.
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