Pastrnak Catches Bergeron at 427, and the Bruins Need Just 3:33 to Turn a Bad Night Into a 6-4 Win

The Bruins were not good Saturday night. Pastrnak said it himself. "We know we were far from our best today," the captain said after a 6-4 win over the San Jose Sharks at TD Garden. And that's exactly why this one tells me more than the 6-0 beatdown of Nashville on Thursday did. Good teams win when they're sloppy. This team is starting to do that on a regular basis.

Here's the stretch that mattered. Boston trailed 3-2 in the third period, and then it was suddenly 5-3. At 8:27 of the third, Pastrnak, just out of the penalty box, ripped a wrist shot from the top of the right circle that knuckled past Alex Nedeljkovic on the far side. Forty seconds later, at 9:07, James Hagens slipped one five-hole from the edge of the crease. At 12:00, Fraser Minten banged in a rebound on the power play. Three goals in 3:33, according to NHL.com. Game over, more or less.

That Pastrnak goal was number 427 for his career, which ties Patrice Bergeron for third on Boston's all-time goals list. Think about who's above them: Johnny Bucyk and Phil Esposito. That's the company now. And Pastrnak got there on a puck that, by Nedeljkovic's own account, wasn't a beauty. "It went off of a D-man's stick and it just changed the whole trajectory of the play," the Sharks goalie said. "It wasn't a pretty goal." Doesn't matter. They all count the same in the record book.

Now the part I really want to talk about: James Hagens around the net. He had a goal and an assist, and Pastrnak went out of his way to praise him. "He's got the touch," Pastrnak said. "He's very smart around the net." The kid is skating on a third line with Casey Mittelstadt and Elias Lindholm that coach Marco Sturm put together in early October, per the Bruins' own pregame notes, and it's turning into the most dangerous unit on the ice some nights.

Mittelstadt opened the scoring at 3:08 of the first off a Lindholm chip across the crease, and it was the 100th goal of his NHL career. Sturm said before the game that Mittelstadt worked on his skating all summer, and you can see it. "It feels good to feel a little bit quicker, for sure," Mittelstadt told the team site. He had a goal and an assist Saturday. So did Minten. Lindholm and JJ Peterka each had two assists. Marat Khusnutdinov scored the other Boston goal on a backhand in the second.

So why was it close? San Jose is annoying, that's why. Michael Misa tied it on a power play in the first. Kiefer Sherwood picked off a Lindholm pass in the neutral zone and scored short-handed in the second, and NHL.com notes the Sharks lead the league with four shorthanded goals this season. Will Smith pulled them to 5-4 just 27 seconds after Minten's goal, at 4-on-4. Jeremy Swayman made 23 saves. Smith said afterward that the Sharks had to be better in front of their own net; from where I sit, the Bruins gave up too much in theirs, too. Will Borgen finally put it away with an empty-netter at 19:32.

"We were down by a goal and then we retake the lead and stay calm," Pastrnak said. "It's impressive how mature this group is sometimes." That's the word I keep coming back to. Mature. This roster has a lot of young pieces, Hagens, Minten, Matt Poitras, and they aren't panicking when the game gets weird.

Boston is 9-2-1 and 7-0-1 over its last eight. The Sharks, who finished a six-game road trip at 3-2-1, head home to face Buffalo on Tuesday.

Here's my take, and it's just my take: the Pastrnak chase is going to be the storyline all winter, but the reason this team is winning is depth scoring from guys nobody had circled in September. If Hagens keeps finishing like this, the conversation about who the Bruins' second-best forward is gets very interesting very fast.