Bold Bruins off to best start in 18 years
LAS VEGAS: The defending Eastern Conference champions Boston Bruins won’t play their first home game until Saturday.
That hasn’t stopped them from opening on a rampage in Western Conference cities, clearly putting last season’s Game Seven loss in the Stanley Cup Final behind them.
The Bruins (3-0-0) remained undefeated when Brad Marchand had two goals and an assist in a 4-3 win over the Vegas Golden Knights on Tuesday night.
Boston scored four straight goals after falling behind 2-0 early in the first period and have won their first three games for the first time in the past 18 seasons.
“We have a good group. We’re pretty much all together again. We’ve got a couple of new guys, but we have a good team,” said Marchand, who has three goals this season. “We’re going to compete every night. That’s what’s in this room, that’s what we expect.
“If we’re going to get beat, we’re either going to have a really bad game or another team is going to battle us.”
Neither of which has taken place yet, as the Bruins have outscored Dallas, Arizona and Vegas 7-3. David Pastrnak and Torey Krug also scored for the Bruins, and Tuukka Rask made 31 saves.
James Neal collected a natural hattrick in a span of less than nine minutes bridging the first and second periods and finished with a career-high four goals as the Edmonton Oilers cruised to a 5-2 win at New York.
Zack Kassian also scored for the Oilers, who are 3-0-0 for the first time since the 2008-09 season. Goalie Mikko Koskinen made 25 saves in his season debut Anthony Beauvillier and Matt Martin scored for the Islanders, who lost two of three on a season-opening, three-game homestand.
Neal became the third Oilers player this century to collect four goals in a game and the first since teammate Connor McDavid did it against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Feb 5, 2018.
Tyler Seguin scored 43 seconds into overtime as visiting Dallas recorded their first win of the season by defeating Washington 4-3.
Alexander Radulov, who scored in the third period, skated up the left wing on an odd-man rush before sliding a feed that Seguin converted at the right post as Dallas improved to 8-1-0 in their past nine visits to Washington.
Roope Hintz scored his team-leading fourth goal and Nick Caamano netted his first career NHL tally. Evgeny Kuznetsov scored in his return for Washington.