BOSTON – The Bruins needed more players to start stepping up if they were going to still gather wins and points while enduring so many injuries, and that’s exactly what happened on Thursday night.
Both Riley Nash and Sean Kuraly scored their first goals of the season and powered the Bruins offense to a 2-1 win over the stodgy, gritty Golden Knights at TD Garden.
After a low-event first period where both teams were testing each other out, things really got started in earnest in the middle stanza between Boston and Vegas. The Bruins got on the board first when Riley Nash got a second effort goal in front for his first score of the season after flinging his first bid hard off the bar.
Vegas tied things up on a rough turnover from Jake DeBrusk, who had his pockets picked by Nate Schmidt near the defensive blue line. Schmidt quickly fed the puck to Cody Eakin for a bang-bang shot and release that beat a sprawling Tuukka Rask.
That’s the way it stayed until the third period when Tim Schaller intercepted a puck at the offensive blue line and started a shift where Boston had the Golden Knights scrambling in their own end. It ultimately turned into Sean Kuraly crashing the net for a loose puck in front after Maxime Lagace had kicked around a couple of shots.
The rest was up to Tuukka Rask and the Bruins defense to hang on in the final minutes with Rask standing tall for 28 saves as the Golden Knights tried to put together a late rally to push things into overtime.