Halak, Bruins shut out Flyers, stay undefeated at home

BOSTON -- Jaroslav Halak made 26 saves to help the Boston Bruins remain undefeated at home with a 3-0 win against the Philadelphia Flyers at TD Garden on Thursday.

Zdeno Chara scored twice, and Jake DeBrusk scored for Boston (6-2-2), which is 4-0-0 at home, has won two straight games and has gotten at least one point in four straight (2-0-2). The Bruins are the only NHL team that has not lost at home.
"Every time you play a game or start a game you hope you can get a win," Halak said. "I would say when you can get a shutout it's always more special. I would say it's a team effort. We need everybody on the same page and we were tonight."
WATCH: [All Flyers vs. Bruins highlights]
It was Halak's second shutout of the season; he has 44 in his NHL career. Expected to back up Tuukka Rask, Halak is 3-0-2 with a 1.43 goals-against average and .945 save percentage in his first season with Boston. He signed a two-year, $5.5 million contract with the Bruins on July 1 after playing the past four seasons with the New York Islanders.
"Well it's something you need every night to have a chance to win," Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy said of having two solid goaltenders. "So for us it's a tremendous luxury. I thought last year we had a lot of that (with Anton Khudobin as the backup) and again we're seeing it this year."

Brian Elliott made 22 saves for the Flyers (4-6-0), who have lost three of their past four games and four straight in Boston.
The Flyers had a couple of chances in the first half of the second period to score the game's first goal. But Halak stopped Jordan Weal on a 2-on-1 at 2:01 and shut down a Claude Giroux breakaway at 8:46.
"[The] second period is a pretty even period," Flyers coach Dave Hakstol said. "… Yep, he absolutely he made a couple good saves at key times. I thought [Elliott] did the same thing for us, made some good saves at key times."
Chara scored on a one-timer at 13:00 of the second period to give the Bruins a 1-0 lead. Danton Heinen stole a pass by Andrew MacDonald and passed the puck back to the blue line to Chara.
DeBrusk made it 2-0 with a power-play goal at 17:28 when he tipped a David Krejci saucer pass past Elliott from the top of the crease.

The Flyers, who went 0-for-3 with the man-advantage, went on the power play at 6:38 and 8:34 of the third period.
"Guys were trying, we didn't execute well enough to get [a goal]," Hakstol said. "That was a real opportunity in the game to put ourselves right back into position in a road game to be within one goal and give ourselves an opportunity to tie the game. We didn't do that."
Chara scored an empty-net goal with 23 seconds remaining.

They said it

"We're not scoring when we have chances, and next thing you know we're down a goal or two. But we've got to keep grinding and keep creating chances and try to be a little more opportunistic." -- Flyers center Sean Couturier
"We got the win. I think I just kept it simple, played hard defensively and I tried to put some shots on net. I think overall my game went well." -- Bruins defenseman Jeremy Lauzon, who had two hits and a blocked shot in 11:25 of ice time in his NHL debut

Need to know

Chara passed Mark Howe for 21st in goals by an NHL defenseman (197). At 41 years, 221 days, he also became the third defenseman in NHL history to score multiple goals in a game at age 41 or older. The others were Tim Horton (41 years, 277 days) and Nicklas Lidstrom (41 years, 191 days).

What's next

Flyers: Host the New York Islanders on Saturday (1 p.m. ET; SN, NBCSP, MSG+, NHL.TV)
Bruins: Host the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday (7 p.m. ET; NHLN, SN1, CITY, TVAS, NESN, NHL.TV)