NEW YORK (AP) — David Pastrnak scored in the third round of a shootout to give the Eastern Conference-leading Boston Bruins a 5-4 victory over the New York Islanders on Friday night.
Pastrnak, Morgan Geekie, James van Riemsdyk, and Mason Lohrei scored in regulation, with Lohrei tying it with 3:09 left on a bank shot from behind the goal line. Linus Ullmark made 34 saves to help Boston improve to 19-5-4.
“That’s the biggest win of the year,” Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said. “Because of the attitude on the bench. It’s the first time where I felt like there was energy, emotion, everybody believed.”
Brock Nelson, Bo Horvat, Alexander Romanov, and Simon Holmstrom scored for New York and Ilya Sorokin made 29 saves. New York had won four in a row.
“Just one of those nights where we made a couple mistakes and they ended up in the back of our net,” Islanders coach Lane Lambert said. “But overall I thought the effort was outstanding.”
Following a wide-open overtime session in which the teams traded chances, Charlie Coyle and Pastrnak scored in the shootout for Boston, while Holmstrom scored for the Islanders.
“It’s a (heck) of a win for us,” Pastrnak said. “Obviously an amazing job by (Ullmark) to keep us in the game early on and then a great job by the (penalty) killers … and power play finally got some important goals.”
Horvat gave the Islanders a 3-2 lead on a power play goal at 5:06 of third that extended his points streak to nine games.
It appeared Brad Marchand tied it with 10:21 remaining, but a video review showed the Boston captain punched the puck past Sorokin while laying prone on the ice.
While the goal was disallowed, Marchand drew a tripping penalty on New York captain Anders Lee on the play, and van Riemsdyk’s power-play goal tied it with 9:12 left.
“We were focused on the task at hand,” Ullmark said. “We (weren’t) complaining and talking down to each other or anything like that.”
Nelson lifted a feed from Horvat over Ullmark on a power play with 7:59 to go to put New York ahead 4-3. but Lohrei banked a shot from behind the goal line with 3:09 left in regulation to force overtime.
“I just jumped in on the rush,” Lohrei said.
