Bruins kick off road trip with 6-3 win in San Jose

Steve Conroy, Boston Herald on Oct 14, 2026

Published in Hockey

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The Bruins may be far from a perfect team but they seem to have hit on a winning formula. It comes down to balanced scoring and tremendous goaltending from Jeremy Swayman to cover up all the warts.

Swayman made 35 saves and the B’s rewarded their night owl fans with a 6-3 victory over the San Jose Sharks at SAP Center on Tuesday to kick off a tough four-game road trip.

The Bruins took a 4-2 lead into the third period but the Sharks cut it to 4-3 on the power play after the B’s were tagged with a too-many-men penalty. At 5:04, Macklin Celebrini smoked a one-timer past Jeremy Swayman to tighten things up.

Shortly after that, Nikita Zadorov dropped the gloves with Darnell Nurse and pummeled the Shark defenseman in a lopsided bout. But that put Zadorov in the box for five minutes with the B’s in lead-protection mode. It didn’t matter.

The B’s got the next goal on a similar play on which they scored against Philadelphia on Saturday. Mason Lohrei jumped up into the play on a 3-on-2 and, instead of shooting it like he did on Saturday, he lost the puck but it took a lucky bounce to Marat Khusnutdinov. The hard-working Russian dished it to Fraser Minten at the top of the crease at 11:37 for his second of the game and third in two games.

The Sharks pulled the goalie for the extra skater and Will Borgen ended it with a long-distance bank shot into the empty net with 1:42 remaining, his first as a Bruin and 15th Black-and-Gold skater to score this year.

The B’s lost a couple of early leads but never trailed on Tuesday.

The Bruins took the first lead of the game, lost it and then regained it before the first period was over.

Before any scoring that counted, Mason Lohrei had a goal wiped off the board because of goalie interference by Khusnutdinov, who appeared to clip the stick of Shark goalie Yaroslav Askarov.

But the new line of Khusnutdinov, Minten and JJ Peterka was humming in the first.

Minten scored the first goal of the game at 12:55 after he hopped on the ice on a line change. He took a feed from Casey Mittelstadt and beat Askarov with a hard wrister from above the circles for his third of the year and second in as many games.

The B’s had some issues with puck management and they could thank the Sharks for refusing a couple of gifts because of their own puckhandling issues. But the problems in their own end also led to a couple of penalties. They killed off the first one easily and were in the process of doing the same with the second one. There was a faceoff just outside the Boston zone with seven seconds left on the penalty and coach Marco Sturm started thinking offense. He put on Matt Poitras and David Pastrnak up front for the faceoff. Poitras got kicked out of the draw and then Pastrnak lost it cleanly. The Sharks went on the attack quickly and, just as the Nikita Zadorov penalty was up, Jacob Trouba’s shot from the blue line found its way behind Jeremy Swayman at 15:29.

But the B’s got the lead back with 1:17 left in the period on a dominant shift by the Minten line again. Charlie McAvoy, in his first game of the season after a six-game suspension, jumped into the play and knocked the puck loose in a slot scramble. It went to Peterka, who fed it back to McAvoy at the top of the crease for the 2-1 lead.

But the poor puck management by the Bruins returned and it cost them another penalty – and another lead. Pastrnak had the puck in the corner with a little bit of time but he wound up giving it away and forced Zadorov to take another penalty on Celebrini at the blue line. And this time, the blue blood talent of the Sharks went to work. Celebrini, the first overall pick in 2024, zipped a perfect pass to Ivar Stenberg, the second overall pick last June, for a tap-in. It was the highly-touted teenager’s first career goal at 5:48.

But a fortunate bounce gave the B’s their lead back. Mark Kastelic gained possession on a dump-in and took it behind the Shark net. It got poked away from him before he could take it out front, but it bounced back against the grain and out front on the back side. With Askarov leaning one way for Kastelic to pop out, Poitras was standing by the back post for an easy goal at 8:42.

After the B’s failed to cash in on two power plays, they pushed the lead to 4-2 with three seconds left in the period on a wild sequence. The B’s top line and top defense pairing staged a brutal battle in their own end against San Jose’s top line, with the two former BU Terriers jousting as the puck came out of the zone. In the neutral zone, Pastrnak made a nice play to Morgan Geekie on the right side. With time running out in the period, Geekie calmly saw Pavel Zacha giving him a 2-on-1 option and Geekie sent it over. Geekie ripped a wrist to the far side over the blocker and the B’s took a two-goal lead into the third period, despite being outshot 18-9 in the second.