PITTSBURGH — Boston center Frank Vatrano scored three goals, center Patrice Bergeron had two more and the Bruins scored goals four different ways to sweep a home-and-home series against the Pittsburgh Penguins, winning 6-2 Friday night.
Left winger Loui Eriksson also had a goal as the Bruins scored goals 5-on-5, 4-on-4, short-handed and on the power play to support goaltender Tuukka Rask, who made 30 saves in improving to 8-0-2 in his last 10 games. The Bruins are 11-2-2 on the road this season.
The Bruins followed up a 3-0 win in Boston on Wednesday and now are 10-1-1 in their last 12 against the Penguins, including playoff games. The Penguins, 1-5-1 in their last seven, lost their fourth in a row and are 0-3 under new coach Mike Sullivan, who coached Boston from 2003-06.
Penguins rookie right winger Conor Sheary scored his first NHL goal and added an assist, and Sidney Crosby had two assists but the NHL’s 28th-ranked offense did little else against Rask, who won his last five. Pittsburgh was 0-for-5 on the power play and is 0-for-19 in its last seven games.
The Bruins led 3-2 entering the third period, then scored three more times against goalie Jeff Zatkoff, with Vatrano scoring twice in the period. Vatrano had two goals in his first 16 games.
Sheary, who made his NHL debut Wednesday night in Boston, moved up to Crosby’s top line after less than 17 minutes of playing time and immediately produced a goal. Crosby gathered the puck following left winger Chris Kunitz’s hit on center Bergeron along the boards and found Sheary in the low slot for a wrister at 8:20.
The goal stopped Rask’s scoreless streak of 150:49 against Pittsburgh.
But Sheary’s former teammate at the University of Massachusetts, Vatrano, answered 1:43 later by snapping off a shot from the top of the left circle for his third goal.
Bergeron scored Boston’s sixth short-handed goal of the season to make it 2-1 only 1:03 into the second period after center Brad Marchand outfought three Penguins for the puck and fed Bergeron for a wrist shot from the high slot.
Defenseman Trevor Daley scored his first goal for Pittsburgh four days after being traded by the Chicago Blackhawks. Daley scored on a slap shot from high above the right circle at 2:39, but Boston regained the lead with another special-teams goal.
Only 17 seconds after Penguins defenseman Ian Cole went off for high sticking, Eriksson was denied by Zatkoff on his first two attempts only to put a third into the net for a power-play goal and his 12th goal of the season. Boston’s power play leads the league.
Zatkoff started back-to-back NHL games for the first time because of normal No. 1 Marc-Andre Fleury’s concussion.
Capitals 5, Lightning 3
WASHINGTON — Alex Ovechkin scored a pair of power-play goals and added two assists, and Marcus Johansson’s power-play tally put Washington ahead with 5:44 left as the Capitals rallied from a 3-0 deficit to defeat the Tampa Bay Lightning 5-3 on Friday night.
Washington right winger T.J. Oshie, who ended the night with an empty-netter, also had an unassisted goal, which pulled Washington to within 3-2 early in the third before Ovechkin tied it with 9:58 left. Oshie added two assists.
Washington goaltender Philipp Grubauer, who replaced starter Braden Holtby after Tampa Bay’s Steven Stamkos made it 3-0 at 9:04 of the second period, stopped all seven shots he faced.
The Capitals have won four straight and 11 of 13. They are 20-2-2 in last 24 home games against Lightning.
Stamkos ended a 10-game goal drought for the Lightning, who also got goals from center Alex Killorn and defenseman Andrej Sustr.
Lightning goalie Ben Bishop, who fell to 1-6-1 lifetime against the Capitals, stopped 18 shots.
Washington pulled to within one when Oshie skated down the left side and beat Bishop on the short side. Minutes later Ovechkin got the puck at the top of the zone, deked a defender and wristed a shot by Bishop to tie it.
Johansson’s go-ahead goal came when he finished off a passing sequence that started with Ovechkin and Oshie.
Tampa Bay put only four shots on goal during the first period, but its first one went in thanks to a great individual effort by Killorn at 8:18 of the period.
While coming down the slot, Killorn took a pass from center Jonathan Marchessault. Killorn eluded a Washington defender, skated around Holtby — who was high in his crease — and managed to tuck the puck in the net for his fifth of the season.
The Lightning made it 2-0 at 6:54 of the second when Sustr beat Holtby with a wrist shot on a rush for his first goal of the season.
Less than three minutes later, Stamkos carried into the Capitals zone on a 3-on-2, kept the puck and fired past Holtby to make it 3-0, ending the Washington goalie’s night after making just nine saves.
The Capitals got on the board with 6:11 left in the second period. Oshie beat Bishop to the rebound of an Ovechkin shot, and passed behind him back to Ovechkin, who fired into the vacated net.