Birthday boy McAvoy sends Bruins over Jets in SO

Tuukka Rask’s wire-to-wire dominance helped to ensure that Charlie McAvoy’s 20th birthday had a happy ending.

Rask was nearly impenetrable for over 65 minutes before McAvoy scored the decisive goal in the shootout for Boston as the Bruins beat the Jets 2-1 on Thursday night.

“A cherry on top of a great effort by our team,” McAvoy said after he improved to 2-for-2 lifetime in shootouts.

After Winnipeg’s Nikolaj Ehlers’ first attempt clanged off the post, McAvoy took the puck and meandered up the ice before tucking his shot past Connor Hellebuyck.

“I saw some room on the blocker side and I just wanted to shoot it there before he was able to recover,” McAvoy said of his winning goal.

Rask made 37 saves and recorded a point for his eighth straight game (7-0-1) as the Bruins beat the Jets for the fourth straight meeting.

It was the first shootout victory for Rask in four tries since Nov. 3, 2016 against Tampa Bay.

“Whenever the (Winnipeg) breakouts happen, then the quality chances I guess happen too and become dangerous, so it happened a few times today, but we battled through and survived,” Rask said.

Torey Krug scored his sixth goal of the season for Boston (18-10-5). Patrik Laine scored his teamleading 18th goal for the Jets.