Hayes leads Bruins to 6-2 win over Avalanche

“We can’t play like this”, Avalanche coach Patrick Roy told reporters after Colorado fell into a five-goal hole en route to a 6-2 loss to previously winless Boston on Wednesday that wrapped up a 1-2-0 season-opening homestand.

“I think the focus and the determination of our group was really good”, said B’s bench boss Claude Julien after the 6-2 win.

“I understand if we don’t have our “A” game”.

“Tonight, I saw things where we were out of control”.

Seems we’re already perusing the standings and speculating on which coach might be in trouble, even though the season is just entering its second full week. “Once we got our legs going and started playing better, we just started making bad decisions with the puck and it ended up costing us against a good team like this”.

Jonas Gustavsson will be between the pipes in Wednesday’s tilt against the Avalanche, Steve Conroy of the Boston Herald reports. They lost battles all over the ice, they managed just 11 shots in the first two periods and there was zero fight in their game as they turned pucks over in the D-zone and watched Semyon Varlamov flail away at pucks until he was bounced from the game.

It wasn’t an out-of-this-world game by any stretch of the imagination – Gustavsson finished the night with 21 saves on 23 shots against – but Gustavsson had his moments where he stood tall when the B’s needed him to.

“I felt pretty good”, he said. “I just have to forget about this game and look forward”.

“It’s nice to go to the net and bang home a rebound”, he said.

A scoring opportunity came early for the Colorado Avalanche as they had a power play at the 31 second mark, due to Boston’s Zdeno Chara getting called for a 2 minute hooking penalty.

The Bruins raced out to a 5-0 lead by the second period and cruised from there to end a three-game slide. It was a night of first as five different Bruins scored their first goals of the season.

It started with Tyler Randell’s first goal of his National Hockey League career – in his National Hockey League debut – on a tip on a shot from Adam McQuaid at 3:46 of the second, and continued with two goals from the refashioned third line.

The Bruins look to get in the win column as they take to the road to face off against the Avalanche at the Pepsi Centre.

With Chris Kelly replacing Brett Connolly to join Ryan Spooner and Jimmy Hayes, the line went from playing constantly in the defensive zone to playing constantly with the puck, showing off passing and finishing skills that hadn’t been evident earlier. Anaheim has scored one goal this season and is 0-for-6 on the power play while the Avalanche have totaled 12 tallies – four by captain Gabriel Landeskog – and is a league-best 5-for-10 with the man advantage.

Kevan Miller opened the scoring for the Bruins 5:49 into the first period, when he blasted a slap shot past Varlamov.

David Krejci added an empty-net goal with 1:29 left.

“I mean, you like to take a few positive things out of this game, but this was the third [loss] in a row, so, you know, honestly maybe that’s a good thing that we’re going to go on the road”, Krejci said when asked of the power play’s success.