Nathan MacKinnon and Miles Wood scored for the Avalanche (29-14-3), who had won eight of 10 (8-2-0). Alexandar Georgiev made 26 saves.
“First period, it was obvious [Boston] had lots of jump,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “We just didn’t get going to win any races, to check the puck back, or kind of check it with their eyes and not with their legs, and they capitalized.”
Pastrnak gave the Bruins a 1-0 lead with a goal 44 seconds into the first period. Coyle poked the puck away from Colorado defenseman Cale Makar in the left face-off circle and Pastrnak picked it up, spun around and scored on a wrist shot.
Jakub Lauko made it 2-0 at 4:58, picking up Morgan Geekie’s wide shot and backhanding it into the open net with Georgiev drawn out of position. It was his first goal of the season in 32 games.
Wood cut it to 2-1 at 7:32, hitting the puck a few times from a tight angle to eventually slip it past Swayman.
“We got off to a pretty slow start obviously,” Avalanche forward Logan O'Connor said. “All it takes against a good team is 10, 15, 20 minutes. We get down early and against a good team like that, away game for us, it’s always going to be tough to come back.”
DeBrusk pushed it to 3-1 at 14:52, deflecting Parker Wotherspoon’s point shot with his 10th goal of the season. Colorado challenged for offside on the play, but was unsuccessful. Since making his NHL debut in 2017-18, only Pastrnak (269), Brad Marchand (199) and Patrice Bergeron (168) have more goals for the Bruins than DeBrusk (129).
MacKinnon cut it to 3-2 at 16:20 of the second period, poking the puck in after it slipped under Swayman’s leg. He extended his point streak to 10 games (five goals, 12 assists).