BOSTON - Rich Peverley scored his first and second goals of the season as the Boston Bruins defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning, 4-1, in a rematch of last year's Eastern Conference Finals to secure their first win of the season on Saturday night at TD Garden.
"I thought our line played with speed, and we were shooting a lot more tonight, and I think it paid off," said Peverley, whose Bruins outshot Tampa Bay, 42-26. "We got some good results."
Boston (1-1-0) kept pressure on Tampa Bay (1-1-0) throughout most of the game, as evident by the large difference in total shots. Both teams had 16 penalty minutes, the Bruins had 18 hits to the Lightning's 14 but Tampa Bay held a 33-32 edge in faceoffs won.
Peverley scored the game's first goal at 2:04 in the second period, assisted by Brad Marchand and Johnny Boychuk. Martin St. Louis scored his 300th career goal at 3:20 in the second, assisted by Ryan Malone and Vincent Lecavalier, to tie the score at 1-1. Daniel Paille then scored on a redirect off a shot from Adam McQuaid (also assisted by Tyler Seguin) to put Boston on top 2-1, a lead that would hold through the end of the second period.
David Krejci scored the B's third goal of the night, assisted by Milan Lucic and Seguin, at 3:07 in the third period and Peverley added his second and final goal at 8:43 on assists from Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand to give Boston its fourth and final goal to secure its first win of the regular season.
Tim Thomas was spectacular in net, stopping 25 of 26 shots for Boston while Mathieu Garon had 38 saves on 42 shots in the loss for Tampa Bay.
"Yeah, you know, get the first win out of the way, kind of get the monkey off our backs and get the season back in the direction we wanted to be going," said Thomas about the Bruins getting their first win of the season.
Boston hosts the Colorado Avalanche in its third game on Monday night at TD Garden.
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