
Boston goaltender Jeremy Swayman keeps an eye on the puck on a shot by Minnesota’s Liam Ohgren during the second period Tuesday night in Boston. Charles Krupa/Associated Press
BOSTON — The Boston Bruins scored a pair of second-period goals and Jeremy Swayman made them hold up with a 33-save shutout for a 3-0 victory over the Minnesota Wild at TD Garden on Tuesday.
Charlie McAvoy and Trent Frederic scored in the second and Morgan Geekie finished it off with an empty-net goal.
It was Swayman’s first shutout of the season.
Minnesota was without their superstar Kirill Kaprizov (knee) and sandpaper forward Ryan Hartman (suspension) but the Bruins were expecting a big push from the Wild. They’d been embarrassed in a 6-0 loss in Ottawa and they came in with an impressive 20-6-3 road record.
But after the Wild owned the first 10 minutes of the game, the Bruins swarmed the Minnesota end for the rest of the scoreless first period, outshooting the Wild 14-7.
Unfortunately for the Bruins, 40-year-old Marc-Andre Fleury was looking like vintage Fleury. He stoned Pavel Zacha on a clean look from 18 feet out in the slot and later made a good glove save – with his usual windmilling panache – on Charlie McAvoy on a power play.
But on a long shift by the first line inside the Minnesota zone early in the second period, the Bruins broke the ice. McAvoy had made an earlier rush in deep that was unsuccessful but he remained aggressive and picked up his seventh goal of the year when he deflected home David Pastrnak’s blue line wrister at 5:46.
The Bruins were all over the Wild end after that, earning a power play. Though they had a lot of zone time, they could not extend the lead.
But they finally did so at 14:16. With the Bruins breaking out on a 3-on-2, Matt Poitras made a terrific cross-ice pass to Trent Frederic on the left wing and Frederic buried his eighth of the year over Fleury’s glove arm.
Then it was time for Swayman to make a flashy glove save. After the Bruins’ fourth line got caught out with the Wild’s top unit, Swayman robbed Matt Boldy on a one-timer attempt at 15:26.
The Bruins maintained their two-goal lead going into the third, but they really had to hang on in the final couple of minutes. Nikita Zadorov was stuck out for a whopping 3:05 while his partner Andrew Peeke was able to get a change after a 2:36 shift. The third line of Poitras, Frederic and Oliver Wahlstrom were also on for approximately as long as Peeke.
After Swayman had five saves in the final few minutes, the Bruins held a 28-21 shot advantage through two periods.
The Bruins had a chance to take a comfortable 3-0 lead early in the third period on an odd-man rush. Elias Lindholm sent a pass to Charlie Coyle, who would have had an empty net if Brock Faber had not barely deflected it.
Zadorov took a cross-checking penalty at 6:48 but the Bruins were able to kill it off well, with Brandon Carlo killing off a good chunk of it by pinning the puck along the kick plate.
Then Oliver Wahlstrom took an offensive zone tripping penalty at 11:12. They killed that one, too, and Wahlstrom had a clean breakaway out of the box but he hit the post.
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