Thomas shuts down Penguins, B's win 3-1

PITTSBURGH, PA - DECEMBER 5: Patrice Bergeron #37 of the Boston Bruins and Sidney Crosby #87 of the Pittsburgh Penguins wait for the puck drop on a face off on December 5, 2011 at CONSOL Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Boston defeated Pittsburgh 3-1. (Photo by Jamie Sabau/Getty Images)

The two top Eastern Conference teams went at it tonight and what a game it was with the Bruins taking on the Penguins. It was a fast-action hard-nosed game with both teams going back and forth. Tim Thomas was the man for the Bruins as he held the Penguins off for a 3-1 win by the Bruins.

In the first period, no scoring happened.

In the second period, Gregory Campbell scored his 2nd goal of the season to give the Bruins a 1-0 lead. Benoit Pouliot later scored his 4th goal of the season to make it 2-0 Bruins. During the period, Brad Marchand slew-footed Matt Niskanen and then they fought each other. Niskanen hits Marchand's helmet a lot with punches, Marchand would come back later with some big punches but this was mainly a draw. Watch the Marchand-Niskanen fight here.

In the third period, Tyler Seguin scored his 13th goal of the season, a power-play goal, from a sweet move by Patrice Bergeron as he schooled defenseman Matt Niskanen and then made a nice pass over to Seguin who one-timed the puck into the net. Later, Matt Cooke scored to make it 3-1. In the period, Joe Vitale bumped into Tim Thomas and Gregory Campbell and Zdeno Chara were trying to get after him. Campbell and Vitale would come out of the scrum, dropped the gloves and had a good fight. It looked like a lot of Campbell's punches didn't reach Vitale. By the end Campbell was dead tired and the fight ended after Vitale threw a left that seemed to hit Campbell's helmet and Campbell fell to the ice. Campbell was fine and got up with no problems so I think it was mostly Campbell being tired and losing his balance from the Vitale punch, not a KO punch. Watch the Campbell-Vitale fight here.

Game notes
The Bruins led the game in faceoff wins 39-36 and blocked shots 9-8. The Penguins led the game in shots 46-27 and hits 24-13.

The Bruins went 1-for-5 on the power-play while the Penguins went 0-for-2 (which were 5-on-3s) on the power-play.

Tim Thomas played in net and made 45 saves on 46 shots. Thomas is now 13-4 with a 1.87 GAA and a .940 save percentage.

Rich Peverley had 2 assists.

Johnny Boychuk, David Krejci, Benoit Pouliot all had 4 shots apiece to lead the Bruins.

Milan Lucic led the Bruins in hits with 3.

Onto the next one
The Bruins are now 17-7-1 with 35 points, 2nd place in the Eastern Conference (1 point behind Pittsburgh but with 3 games in hand), and 1st place in the Northeast Division. The Bruins are on a 4-game winning streak now. They have not lost a game in regulation since October, going 14-0-1 in their last 15 games.

The Bruins next game is tomorrow at the Winnipeg Jets at 8:30pm ET.