Bruins beat Lighting, 4-1, for first win of season

BOSTON — Rich Peverley scored twice and Brad Marchand assisted on both to lead the Boston Bruins to a 4-1 victory over the Tampa Bay Lighting on Saturday and give the Stanley Cup champions their first win this season.

Tim Thomas made 25 saves for the Bruins in the rematch of the Eastern Conference finals. Boston won that series — with Thomas posting a 1-0 shutout in Game 7 — and went on to earn its first NHL title since 1972.

Tyler Seguin also had a pair of assists for Boston, which raised its sixth championship banner on Thursday night before losing to the Philadelphia Flyers, 2-1.

Martin St. Louis scored for the Lightning, and Mathieu Garon stopped 38 shots.

After a scoreless first period, the teams traded goals in a flurry, with Peverley opening the scoring 2:04 into the second on a rebound of a shot by Marchand that bounced off the goal iron.

Tampa Bay tied it a little more than a minute later when Vincent Lecavalier stole the puck from Nathan Horton in the neutral zone and poked it ahead.

St. Louis chased it down and went in all alone before beating Thomas on a wrist shot past the stick side. Lecavalier’s assist was his 47th point in 46 career games against the Bruins.

But Boston came back 98 seconds after that on Daniel Paille’s tip-in of an Adam McQuaid shot. Then, with 3:07 gone in the third, David Krejci scored on a rebound of Milan Lucic’s shot to give Boston a 3-1 lead.

The Bruins made it 4-1 when Patrice Bergeron crossed it through traffic in front of the net; Peverley was the first one to get to it, and he swiped it past Garon.