Bruins hold off Lightning, clinch Atlantic Division

BOSTON --The Boston Bruins clinched the Atlantic Division title with a 2-1 win against the Tampa Bay Lightning at TD Garden on Saturday.

Patrice Bergeron and Garnet Hathaway scored, and Linus Ullmark made 26 saves for Boston (56-11-5), which has won six straight game and clinched the division for the first time since 2019-20.
"I think 85 percent of the game was will [over skill] for both teams," Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said. "I think it just made for a really good hockey game. Maybe a late 80s, early 90s [type of] hockey game, but it's great because we're going to face this in the playoffs."
Victor Hedman scored, and Andrei Vasilevskiy made 32 saves for Tampa Bay (42-26-6), which has lost four straight.
The Lightning remained five points behind the Toronto Maple Leafs, who have two games in hand, for second in the Atlantic.
"It's tough to say it's a great loss," Tampa Bay forward Pierre-Edouard Bellemare said. "But at the end of the day, we showed up and [had] way more emotion, way more passion, and it's not the outcome that we wanted, but the process is pretty much as close [to what] we wanted as possible."
Hathaway gave the Bruins a 2-1 lead at 17:32 of the second period, scoring on his own rebound in front after his initial redirection was stopped by Vasilevskiy.
"As a team we've been looking forward to this, to a team that's going to be in the playoffs and we potentially could see," Hathaway said. "[They're] a team that's battling right now, and you're going to play that same way. It's encouraging for us as a line, but encouraging for us as a team to play that way."

Bergeron gave the Bruins a 1-0 lead at 6:46 of the first period, tipping in a centering pass from Brad Marchand on a power play.
Hedman tied it 1-1 at 9:30 with a short-handed goal, scoring on slap shot from the high slot. It was the first short-handed goal of his NHL career.
Tampa Bay was 6-for-7 on the penalty kill.
"We were patient in the zone (on the penalty kill)," Hedman said. "We did what we were supposed to do, and [were] aggressive when we could [be]."

There were 38 penalty minutes between the two teams.
"I don't care about Boston. I care about us," Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. "[The physicality] was good for us. It's identity for us."
The Lightning pulled Vasilevskiy for an extra attacker late in the third period, but Ullmark made four saves in the final 45 seconds.
"We keep playing to our standards (late in games)," Bergeron said. "We keep putting pressure on. I think that the few times where we got back on our heels throughout the year is when we put ourselves in trouble, so I think anytime we're able to trust each other, we're going to reload. But we can be aggressive and we're going to have some layers. I feel like that's a hard style of hockey to play against."
NOTES:Hedman is the first Lightning defenseman to score a short-handed goal since Mikhail Sergachev on March 7, 2020. … Bergeron extended his point streak to a season-high five games (three goals, five assists). … The Bruins won their division for the seventh time in the past 20 years. The only teams with that many over that span are the Washington Capitals (10), Detroit Red Wings (seven) and Vancouver Canucks (seven).