The Bruins Allow 2.15 Goals a Game. The Blues Were Shut Out in Their Last Two Home Games. Something Gives Tonight

The Bruins lost in Raleigh on Tuesday and nobody in the room sounded rattled about it. "Overall, I didn't mind our game," coach Marco Sturm said after the 2-1 loss to Carolina, which ended an eight-game point streak. "Puck management – they just did it a little bit better than us." Tonight is the back half of a two-game road trip, 8 p.m. Eastern against the St. Louis Blues at Enterprise Center, and the NHL's own stat sheets say Boston walks in with a pretty good hand.

Start with the table. Through 13 games the Bruins are 9-3-1 with 19 points, first in the Atlantic Division and fourth in the whole league, according to the NHL standings updated Thursday morning. They are 5-1-0 at TD Garden and 4-2-1 on the road. The Blues are 5-6-1 with 11 points, sixth in the Central, and 3-2-1 at home. St. Louis has lost two straight, and both of those were home games in which it did not score: 4-0 to Carolina on Oct. 24 and 2-0 to Montreal on Tuesday, according to the league's schedule and results.

Now the part that actually explains the record. The NHL's team summary has Boston allowing 2.15 goals a game, second-fewest in the league behind only Dallas. The Bruins also score 3.77 a game, fourth in the league. That combination is how you end up plus-21 in goal differential, 49 scored and 28 allowed, after 13 games. St. Louis is at 2.92 scored and 3.08 allowed per game.

Here's the weird one. Boston is not winning the shot battle. The Bruins average 25.5 shots on goal a game and allow 28.1, per the same league summary. Tuesday was the extreme version: Jeremy Swayman made 28 saves, and Carolina's Pyotr Kochetkov needed only 14 to win his eighth straight start, according to NHL.com's game recap. So when Boston wins, it is winning on finishing and goaltending, not volume.

The goaltending is real. Swayman is 7-2-1 with a 2.19 goals-against average, a .921 save percentage and a shutout in 10 starts, per the club's official stats. Michael DiPietro has started three times, gone 2-1-0, and sits at 1.69 and .941 with a shutout of his own. The Bruins have not announced tonight's starter in the sources reviewed here. On the other side, St. Louis has split its net: Joel Hofer is 4-3-1 with a 2.40 GAA and .917 save percentage in eight starts, and Jordan Binnington is 1-3-0 with a 4.11 GAA and an .846 save percentage in four.

Up front, David Pastrnak is doing David Pastrnak things: seven goals and 11 assists for 18 points in 13 games, plus-5, with a team-high 43 shots. Elias Lindholm has 11 points and Fraser Minten has 10, with Minten at plus-8. Lindholm's assist on Pavel Zacha's power-play goal in Raleigh extended his point streak to three games, BostonBruins.com reported, with a goal and three assists in that run. Zacha said that pass from Pastrnak and Lindholm surprised him: "I didn't even have to move my stick." Depth is showing up too: James Hagens has nine points and Matthew Poitras has seven in 10 games.

For St. Louis, the scoring is spread thin. Mason McTavish and Jimmy Snuggerud lead with six goals apiece, and Dylan Holloway and McTavish share the team lead with 10 points. Robert Thomas, logging 20 minutes a night, has one goal and six points.

Special teams look like a coin flip on paper. The NHL summary has Boston's power play at 22.0 percent (13th) and St. Louis at 21.9 percent (14th). The penalty kill is where the Blues have the edge: 84.4 percent, seventh in the league, against Boston's 80.4 percent, 16th. Boston did kill a five-on-three to open the third period in Raleigh, and Sturm called it a "huge kill" that gave his team a boost before Sebastian Aho's winner at 10:19.

One more piece of context from the Carolina loss. Sturm, talking about the defending champions, said, "When you go through a playoff series like they did and won it on the end, they know how to do it. We're just not there yet." Mason Lohrei, asked about Swayman, put it simply: "He's our backbone."

Dez's take: I'll be honest, the shot numbers make me a little nervous. Getting outshot most nights and winning anyway is a great trick until the goalie has an ordinary week. But a team that gives up 2.15 a night and has a guy with 18 points in 13 games is not a fluke, and a Blues team that got shut out in its last two home games is exactly the kind of opponent you want after a loss. If Boston doesn't take dumb penalties into that Blues kill, this one should be there for the taking.

After tonight, the Bruins come home for Chicago on Saturday afternoon and Vegas on Monday night, according to the team schedule.

What we still don't know: who starts in goal tonight, and whether the Bruins can keep winning while getting outshot once the schedule stiffens in November.