McAvoy, Coyle each scores twice, Bruins win Centennial game against Canadiens 

BOSTON -- Charlie McAvoy and Charlie Coyle each scored twice for the Boston Bruins in a 6-3 win against the Montreal Canadiens at TD Garden on Sunday.

Boston celebrated its Centennial, with the game taking place exactly 100 years after its first NHL game, a 2-1 win against the Montreal Maroons on Dec. 1, 1924. The Bruins held a pregame ceremony that featured tribute videos and appearances from franchise legends such as Bobby Orr, Ray Bourque, Patrice Bergeron and more.

“The history of the game and this organization is something that we’re very proud of in here,” said Bruins captain Brad Marchand, who was the lone active player to stand among the Boston alumni during the ceremony. “To have a lot of alumni in the building and be part of the events is really special, and it’s incredible to have them around.”

David Pastrnak also scored, and Jeremy Swayman made 26 saves for Boston (12-11-3), which has won four of six (4-2-0). The Bruins extended their point streak against the Canadiens to 16 games (15-0-1), the longest active point streak by a team against a single opponent.

“Of course we want to win,” Boston interim coach Joe Sacco said. “We wanted to make the fans, we wanted to make the players of the past that are here now, we wanted to make them proud of our effort more than anything today. The score usually takes care of itself when you do that, so I thought our guys did a pretty good job of that today.”

Cole Caufield scored twice, and Nick Suzuki had two assists for Montreal (8-13-3), which lost 4-3 at the New York Rangers on Saturday and has lost four of its past five (1-3-1). Cayden Primeau made 24 saves.

“I mean, this ceremony before, [and] anytime we come here, they give us a hard time,” Primeau said. “Just as we do. But yeah, they’re a hard team. … It’s hard to try to come back after trying to come back yesterday against two good teams, back to back.”

McAvoy gave the Bruins a 1-0 lead at 11:45 of the first period, skating through the right face-off circle before looping around the net and scoring with a wraparound.

“I’m looking at my angle to shoot, and I had enough speed where I thought if I can look and sell this, then I’m going to wrap,” McAvoy said. “You just make that decision and then go with it.”

Pastrnak pushed it to 2-0 at 12:40, finishing Pavel Zacha’s pass from behind the net with a one-timer.

Coyle extended it to 3-0 just 15 seconds later, lifting a backhand over Primeau’s stick from in front.

“You can’t help the other team, dig yourself in a hole,” Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said. “It’s hard to play catch-up hockey on a back-to-back. It’s hard when you’re fresh, so we lacked a little bit of that tonight.”

McAvoy made it 4-0 on a short-handed breakaway 38 seconds into the second period, shifting the puck forehand to backhand and stuffing it around Primeau’s outstretched right pad.

Caufield scored in his third straight game to cut it to 4-1 at 5:42, redirecting the puck past Swayman in front.

“I didn’t think the game was lopsided at all,” Caufield said. “We give them those three goals early, and then a couple later there, and again, it’s just tough to climb out. I think we clean those things up, we have a game and maybe it goes our way. I don’t think we changed our game at all, just kind of [needed to] have that urgency from puck drop.”

Coyle pushed it to 5-1 at 21 seconds of the third period. He took a pass from Cole Koepke on the rush and deked around Primeau before putting the puck in at the left post.

Emil Heineman cut it to 5-2 at 2:28 with a one-timer set up by Jake Evans, and Caufield made it 5-3 at 6:38 by going five-hole on Swayman with a wrist shot from the left circle.

Koepke scored an empty-net goal for the 6-3 final at 17:46.

“We’ve been doing the right things for a long time, and it was only a matter of time before we were going to get rewarded,” Swayman said. “And we’re going to continue to do that. We've got two days of practices in front of us. We’re going to take advantage of it, take the positives and keep the nose to the grindstone.”

NOTES: This was the 940th game between the Bruins and Canadiens (regular season and playoffs), the most between two opponents in NHL history. … Caufield (16 goals in 24 games) became the third Canadiens player in the last 35 years to reach the 15-goal mark of a season in 24 games or fewer, joining Tyler Toffoli (23 games in 2020-21) and Brian Savage (16 games in 1995-96). … Only seven Europe-born players in NHL history have scored as many goals through 700 games as Pastrnak (357 in 700 games): Jari Kurri (454), Pavel Bure (436), Alex Ovechkin (433), Teemu Selanne (400), Jaromir Jagr (377), Peter Stastny (369) and Ilya Kovalchuk (368).