It was another impressive teamwide victory for the Boston Bruins on Thursday night in a situation where letdowns and phrases like “scheduled losses” can be tossed around pretty liberally. They were returning home from a long, successful 11-day road trip and could have been ripe for an effort where they let down and lost focus away from the task against a mediocre Nashville Predators team they absolutely should be able to handle.
Instead, the Bruins showed another strong example of their team depth with five different goal scorers and 10 different skaters on the scoresheet in an impressive 6-0 blowout win over the Preds at TD Garden.
The latest scoring binge makes it five guys with at least four goals scored in the team’s first 11 games and nine players that are on pace to top 50 points this season, the exact kind of offensive depth that’s kept seasoned pros like Sean Kuraly, Connor Clifton and Jonathan Aspirot out of the lineup with so many young players consistently shining.
“Every season you start from zero, but obviously the core was here [last season],” said David Pastrnak. “We know how we are built and how we have to play. We just need to keep harping on playing that way every night and staying to our identity.
“It’s amazing. It obviously helps when every line is producing. It’s more like you are waiting [to see] ‘who is it gonna be tonight?’ So it’s fun to see. It’s amazing. It takes away [the pressure] from every everybody. Every line is finding chemistry slowly, so we have good chemistry all around on the four lines producing. It makes it much easier for defending and getting those wins.”
Some of the scoring punch is obviously not surprising, with Pastrnak leading the way with two goals and four points in Thursday night’s win over Nashville, and leading the team with six goals and 16 points in 11 games, which has got him in the league’s top 10 for scoring. But the robust B’s offense has them fourth in the NHL, scoring 3.82 goals per game, with a snake-bitten Morgan Geekie having scored just once this season after being Boston’s second-biggest goal provider the last few seasons.
Instead, Elias Lindholm and Fraser Minten both join Geekie with eight points as the second-tier B’s scorers thus far, and James Hagens, Matt Poitras, JJ Peterka and Pavel Zacha just behind in a third tier. Poitras has points in five consecutive games and was the only B’s player to collect a point on every game of the just-concluded road trip as the young, skilled players are very clearly making a difference adding depth and variation to the overall offensive attack.
Some thought the B’s might take a half-step back this season after losing Viktor Arvidsson in free agency or while introducing some of the young kids into the big boy lineup, but it’s been the exact opposite with the speed, skill and dynamic element of the young players elevating the overall team game.
“It all comes back to depth,” said Charlie McAvoy, who had four assists in the win over Nashville and joins Pastrnak as a point-per-game player thus far. “That’s kind the word that comes to mind when you think about it. It’s been a full team effort, and everybody has been pitching in.
“I was really proud of the guys for not only keeping us afloat, but for a lot of guys to step up and to really exceed [expectations] while I was out. And then coming back I just wanted to do what I could to help the team. It’s been a great little stretch and it’s good to be back home now.”
The seven B’s players with the last three goals scored thus far put them all on a 20-goal pace for the season, which gives the Bruins coaching staff a ton of different options in terms of mixing and matching forwards. Right now there’s a top-heavy first line with Pastrnak, Peterka and Zacha that teamed up for a pair of goals in Thursday’s win, but all four forward lines were noticeably crowding the front of the net and generating traffic while paying the price at the net front.
Tortellini tip drill 🍝 https://t.co/rYmGP7XwL4
— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) October 23, 2026
Apparently, the team made a group trip to