Bruins take 1st place after spirited game vs Lightning

Boston Bruins Game 76: Tampa Bay Lightning @ Boston Bruins game recap video, on March 29, 2018.

On Thursday the Bruins hosted the Tampa Bay Lightning in a spirited battle for first place in the Atlantic Division. We got to see some rough stuff between these two top teams as Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask got into it with Lightning forward Cory Conacher and later in the game Bruins David Pastrnak got his first "Gordie Howe" hat trick (scoring a goal, getting an assist and getting into a fight). Yes, both of those things happened in this one game, read the game summary below.

Quick game summary
In the first period, at 19:02, Bruins Tim Schaller scored his 12th goal of the season, giving the Bruins a 1-0 lead. At 19:34, Bruins David Pastrnak scored his 32nd goal of the season, a power-play goal, giving the Bruins a 2-0 lead.

In the second period, at 1:44, Lightning J.T. Miller scored a power-play goal, cutting the Bruins lead to 2-1. At 11:16, Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask went after Lightning Cory Conacher after Conacher pushed Bruins defenseman Brandon Carlo into him, see the video below.

Tuukka Rask goes after Cory Conacher 3/29/18

In the third period, at 7:16, after Lightning Dan Girardi hit Bruins Patrice Bergeron, Bruins David Pastrnak went after Girardi and they had a short uneventful fight where gladly no one got hurt. At 11:59, Bruins Patrice Bergeron scored his 28th goal of the season, giving the Bruins a 3-1 lead. At 13:54, Lightning Victor Hedman scored, cutting the Bruins lead to 3-2. At 19:04, Bruins Brad Marchand scored his 34th goal of the season, an empty-net goal, giving the Bruins a 4-2 lead.

Game notes
Tuukka Rask played in net and made 26 saves on 28 shots. Rask is now 33-11-5 with a 2.31 GAA and a .918 save percentage this season.

The Bruins led the game with a 55% faceoff percentage, in shots 30-28 and blocked shots 17-13. The Lightning led the game in hits 38-29. The Bruins went 1-for-3 on the power-play while the Lightning went 1-for-4.

David Pastrnak led the Bruins with 4 shots. Noel Acciari led the Bruins with 6 hits and 3 blocked shots.

Sean Kuraly, Rick Nash, Jake DeBrusk, Jordan Szwarz, Zdeno Chara, Charlie McAvoy and Tommy Cross were scratched for the Bruins.

Three stars of the game
1) Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask
2) Bruins forward Patrice Bergeron
3) Bruins forward David Pastrnak

Onto the next one
The Bruins are now 48-17-11 with 107 points this season and are in 1st place in the Atlantic division. The Bruins are 5-2-3 in their last ten games and their home record is now 26-7-5 this season. The next game for the Bruins is on Saturday, when they host the Florida Panthers, at 1pm ET.