PHILADELPHIA — Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron are dragging their teammates toward the playoffs.
Three days after Marchand’s hat trick in Boston, Bergeron provided another on Broad Street. They powered the shorthanded Bruins to a 4-2 win over the Flyers here on Tuesday, boosting their edge in the East Division to 5 points. The fourth-place Bruins (20-10-6) have 20 games left, two more than the fifth-place Flyers (18-15-5).
The Bruins, without their top two netminders and No. 1 defenseman Charlie McAvoy, squandered a pair of Bergeron goals in a miserable second period. No matter. Marchand’s shorthanded strike, and Bergeron’s empty-netter, sent them toward Thursday’s game in D.C. feeling confident.
Bergeron (3-0—3) and Marchand (1-3—4) helped make a winner out of 22-year-old netminder Jeremy Swayman, who saved 40 of 42 shots in his NHL debut.
The University of Maine product was called on with Tuukka Rask (upper body) and Jaroslav Halak (COVID list) out, and fellow rookie Dan Vladar resting after working the previous night in Boston. He did a stellar job, surviving a second period in which the Bruins were outshot, 25-7.
On the winning goal, struggling rookie defenseman Jeremy Lauzon made the right play. After Marchand created a shorthanded turnover to the slot, Lauzon took the open ice and rushed 2 on 1 with Marchand. Philadelphia’s Shayne Gostisbehere tightly played the offensively limited Lauzon, sliding over to deny the pass. Lauzon got it over anyway.
You can guess what happened next. Marchand deked to open Carter Hart’s pads, slipped it through, and the Bruins had a lead to protect.
The returning Kevan Miller (22:25) and Lauzon (24:09) helped kill the final 6 on 5, until Marchand and Bergeron teamed up to end it.
Observations after 40 minutes:
▪ With Charlie McAvoy (upper body) a late scratch, the Bruins struggled to defend their zone, get out of their zone, and stay in the opposite end. The Flyers outshot the Bruins, 38-18, through two periods of a tie game. After a relatively tidy first by the visitors, the home team battered the Bruins. They scored twice in the second, hit two posts, and racked up a 25-7 advantage in shots.
▪ So: welcome to the NHL, Jeremy Swayman. The rookie was learning to swim by being tossed over the side of a boat in a Nor’easter. He allowed two goals off of defensive breakdowns, bailed out his mates with a pair of breakaway stops — on blocked shots that went the other way — and was huge during two penalty kills. He had 36 saves by the second period of his first career start.
▪ It was 1-0 at 7:09, after Patrice Bergeron potted a rebound created by Brad Marchand’s stickhandling out high, the shot he slung on the net and Craig Smith’s tip off Carter Hart’s chest. Bergeron had his 13th goal of the year, and 900th career point (fourth among Bruins).
▪ Swayman came up big on the 2-0 goal. After Philadelphia’s Scott Laughton turned a Matt Grzelcyk fumble into a shorthanded breakaway, Swayman made a pad stop. The Bruins took the rebound and raced the other way, Marchand and Pastrnak setting up Bergeron for a one-timer he jammed through the five-hole.
▪ During the warmup, Swayman remained on the ice until the buzzer sounded, stretching, visualizing and locking in. Whatever he did, it worked. Swayman’s first touch was a reverse to his defenseman. His first save was a blocker job on Nicolas Aube-Kubel. His first big stop came shorthanded, on a Joel Farabee redirect in the slot. He also blockered aside a Nolan Patrick try off the rush on that kill.
▪ Jakub Zboril’s struggles continued. He was on the ice for both Flyers goals through 40 minutes, and all but benched after the second.
Swayman bailed out his fellow rookie with a breakaway save, after a first-period blocked shot went the other way. He was shaky with his touches. In the second, before the Flyers made it 2-1 at the 1:33 mark, he tripped and lost the puck to Travis Konecny, who found Jake Voracek for a tap-in. He logged one more shift in the second after the next Flyers goal, a Shayne Gostisbehere strike at 4:03.
▪ The Bruins were outshot, 9-1, and outscored, 2-0, in the first 7:00 of the second. The Flyers tied the score amid more Bruins puck-chasing. On an extended shift in the defensive zone, Trent Frederic lost his stick, and his man, Gostisbehere, got loose and ripped a shot over Swayman’s glove. The netminder went down and couldn’t get a push across, leaving plenty of space high.
Matt Porter can be reached at matthew.porter@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter: @mattyports.
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