B's Set NHL Points Mark in Win Over Caps

In what has been an impressive and record-setting season, the Boston Bruins were determined to break another long-standing NHL standard on Tuesday night against the visiting Capitals. With two games remaining, the Bruins needed a pair of points to become the first team in NHL history to record as many as 133 points in a season, and they checked off that box with a 5-2 win over Washington.

Five different Bruins scored to help Linus Ullmark to his 40th win of the season, tying a 40-year-old franchise record for victories, a mark set by former Caps goalie Pete Peeters in 1982-83.
Neither Ullmark nor Washington starter Charlie Lindgren was able to finish the game; both departed with injuries in the third period.
Playing for the second time in as many nights and facing the League's top team in the circuit's toughest building, the undermanned Caps hung in gamely against the juggernaut Bruins, but Boston's power play staked it to a lead in the second, and the Bruins put some distance between themselves and the Caps in the third.
"I thought our guys showed a lot of compete out there," says Caps' coach Peter Laviolette. "the power-play goals didn't help; right off the bat they catch two [power-play goals] and I thought [Nick Jensen] had a big goal just to push it within one and get it back going in the other direction. Just a couple of mistakes ended up costing us."
For the second time in as many starts, Lindgren turned in a relentlessly gritty performance in goal, and it was the last of his 33 saves - in just over 45 minutes of work - that led to his departure.
The game was scoreless into the middle of the second period when Washington went shorthanded for the first time in the game. Boston grabbed a 1-0 lead on a Brad Marchand power-play goal, a shot that came from the bottom of the right circle off a fine feed from David Pastrnak at 8:32 of the middle period.
The assist was Pastrnak's 50th of the season, and he joins Edmonton's Connor McDavid as the second player in the League this season to amass both 60 goals and 50 assists. Prior to that tandem, no NHL player had hit those twin plateaus in the same season since 1995-96, when both Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr - both of Pittsburgh - achieved the feat.
Less than six minutes later, Pastrnak had his second primary power-play assist of the night as the Bruins doubled their lead to 2-0 on their second man advantage opportunity of the evening. This time, Tyler Bertuzzi buried the rebound of a Pastrnak shot at 14:20 of the second.
Washington answered back swiftly after the second Boston goal, cutting the deficit to 2-1 at 15:27 when Jensen's shot from the high slot bounded off a Bruins defender and past Ullmark.
Lindgren was under siege early in the third when Boston poured 10 shots on him in just over three and a half minutes. He stopped them all, and in one sequence denied Pastrnak's one-time bid from the slot, losing his stick and catching glove in the process. He then used his bare-handed forearm to stop Pavel Zacha on a follow-up try.
Finally, at 4:13 of the third, Boston's Tomas Nosek solved Lindgren when he fired home a loose puck from the slot for an unassisted goal that made it a 3-1 game.
A minute later, Lindgren did the splits to thwart Taylor Hall from the top of the paint, and plucky Chucky was unable to continue, the first time all season he did not finish one of his starts. Darcy Kuemper came on in relief, also for the first time this season.
"I thought he was really good," says Laviolette of Lindgren. "He was really dialed in. He played a really good game for us. Even the one he got hurt on, he made a heck of a save to come across and get a glove on that. I thought he competed hard all night. He gave us a chance to be in that game, and to try to push it to a spot where we could win it."
"It's one of those where as a team, you wish you could help him out a little bit more," says Caps' winger Tom Wilson. "He made some amazing saves. He's a guy that takes a ton of pride in his game and he never gives up on any puck.
"It's rare you get a bit of a standing ovation from the away fans for him, but much deserving. He's got no glove and he's still throwing his body in the way. He battled great. I hope he's okay, and we'll check on him."
There was no definitive postgame word as to Lindgren's condition.
Exactly three minutes after the Nosek goal, Wilson struck on a Washington power play, putting a backhander to the shelf to again draw the Caps to within a goal at 3-2.
But the Bruins would not be denied, and ex-Caps winger Garnet Hathaway bit the hand that once fed him at 7:49 to again increase the Boston lead.
A late empty-netter from Jake DeBrusk accounted for the 5-2 final score.
"These guys are where they're at in the standings for a reason," says Jensen of the Bruins. "They're obviously an elite team and they're playing really well together.
"There's some frustration for us right now, but I respect every guy in this room for the effort that was given tonight. I know it didn't go our way, and like I said, it's a good team. But everyone went all the way through, and that's what we like to see here down the stretch."