Coyle Notches First Career Hat Trick, Lifts B's Past Isles

BOSTON -- Charlie Coyle had his first NHL hat trick for the Boston Bruins in a 5-2 win against the New York Islanders at TD Garden on Thursday.

The 31-year-old forward’s first goal of the night marked the 150th of his career, and he also had his 250th NHL assist.

“It feels good,” Coyle said. “I was just on the end of a lot of good plays and passing plays, and sometimes it just goes that way. You get a sense it kind of feels like getting your first goal out of the way. You kind of think those are the milestones, but you can never really focus on that stuff.”

David Pastrnak had a goal and two assists, and Linus Ullmark made 27 saves for Boston (11-1-1). Trent Frederic had a goal and an assist, and Brad Marchand and James van Riemsdyk each had two assists.

“[The Islanders are] a team that notoriously are one of the top forechecking teams, and they go hard to the net with a lot of point shots,” Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said. “I thought in the second period they were better than us, and that’s where they got to their game, and I thought we contributed to that with our puck management and our changes.”

Frederic gave the Bruins a 1-0 lead at 14:05 of the first period from the high slot. Coyle worked the puck to van Riemsdyk behind the goal line, and he set up Frederic for a wrist shot.

Nelson tied it 1-1 on the power play at 17:23, poking in the puck on a rebound from Noah Dobson’s point shot.

Coyle’s power-play goal gave Boston a 2-1 lead at 6:06 of the second period. His one-timer in front of the net beat Sorokin after combining with Pastrnak and Pavel Zacha.

Holmstrom tied it 2-2 with a short-handed goal at 2:50 of the third period off a Marchand turnover at the Islanders blue line, but Pastrnak put Boston ahead 3-2 43 seconds later with a power-play goal from the left circle.

“We score a huge short-handed goal, and then we’ve got to find a way to kill the penalty, and we didn’t,” Islanders coach Lane Lambert said. “Right now, we’ve got to find a way to dig ourselves back in and dig ourselves out a little bit. There’s too many times that [in] these costly moments, we’re not up to the task at the moment."

Coyle made it 4-2 at 9:26, knocking in a cross-ice feed from van Riemsdyk at the right post.

“I think it was [Coyle] and ‘Freddy’ [Frederic] on the boards [who] did a really good job of winning that battle, keeping the puck alive,” van Riemsdyk said. “And I was kind of underneath their coverage and had a lot of time to make my way to the net, and [Coyle] got to a great spot, and I was just trying to find him on the tape, and he made a strong play to get it up in that scenario and score the goal.”

Pastrnak skated in on an empty net and passed it to Coyle to complete his hat trick at 18:39 for the 5-2 final.

“The season’s long. You’re going to go through different types of games,” Pastrnak said. “You’re going to be up, you’re going to be chasing the game, and you just have to believe in the process, play our game, and we have a good group in here.”

NOTES: The Bruins extended their home point streak against the Islanders to 12 games dating to Dec. 9, 2017 (10-0-2). Boston owns just one other active home point streak of at least 12 games against one franchise (19 games vs. Philadelphia)… van Riemsdyk scored his 600th NHL point with an assist in the first period on Thursday.