With Zdeno Chara out of action for the third straight game, and with the next most tenured NHL defender, John-Michael Liles, injured in a scary collision with the endboards just five minutes into the first period of Sunday’s head-to-head with the Tampa Bay Lightning at TD Garden, the Boston Bruins were down two veteran defensemen and were in an all hands on deck mode.

Down to five defensemen -- the Bruins actually dropped the four defensemen shortly after Liles’ injury with Adam McQuaid heading down the tunnel for about five minutes with an undisclosed situation and then Torey Krug missing the first eight minutes plus of the second period due to a two and five-minute major for fighting Nikita Kucherov -- the Black and Gold straight-up befuddled Tampa Bay’s attack.

“Next man up, we just need to figure it out,” B’s defenseman Kevan Miller, who played the most of any B’s defender, at 26:42, said of the shuffling bodies back and forth. “There’s nothing you can do at that point you just got to kind of go out there and do the best job you can. I think we did a great job handling it. We have a pretty good system that we follow and the guys kind of know the next man up over the boards is going to do the job. We just kind of rolled from there and figured it out.”

Led by Tuukka Rask’s 30 stops on 31 shots against, what really put the Bolts in a hole against the B’s was timely goal scoring from the Bruins. Deadlocked in a scoreless draw through one, the Bruins turned the heat on Tampa’s Ben Bishop in the second period with 15 shots on goal, and found paydirt three times, the first on a net-front whack from Dominic Moore, the second on a power-play deflection from David Backes, and the third from Jimmy Hayes for Hayes’ first goal in 36 (yes, 36) games.

A monkey on his back since Feb. 24, when Hayes last scored a goal, 57 shots ago, Hayes broke his slump of being just one of two NHL forwards to have played in 19 games this season and not record a single point, and reacted with the classic ‘throw the monkey off his back’ celebration.

“To be able to contribute and get a goal and step in the right direction, that’s what the plan is,” the Dorchester, Mass., native said of ditching the monkey. “[David] Backes tried to grab it. I think it was more of a joke that it was an elephant. I think I lost about 10 pounds there. I felt pretty good.”

The Bruins added a fourth goal, the team-leading 13th goal of the season from David Pastrnak, banked off Tyler Johnson’s skate and into the Lightning cage, while the Bolts finally countered back with a Victor Hedman goal scored off Colin Miller and through Rask with just 2:39 left in a 4-1 final.

Despite losing his shutout, the play of the 29-year-old Rask once again made the difference.

“He’s playing exceptionally well right now and I’m happy for him. He’s focused and always has the same demeanor regardless, and that’s the great thing with Tuukka,” McQuaid said. “He’s just the same guy that comes to the rink every day, regardless of how things are going. He brings that calm demeanor into the team and when he’s in net, that has a trickle down effect on the whole team.”

The Bruins are now 2-0-0 against the Lightning this season.

Random thoughts and notes

- What made the difference for the Bruins in this one? The special teams game. Not only did the Bruins capitalize on their lone power play of the night (1-for-1 with Backes’ deflection on Bishop), the Bruins held the high-flying Tampa Bay power play, which entered play with the fourth-best percentage in the NHL, to an 0-for-2 night with just one shot on goal on their two opportunities.

“We’ve been pretty good on the kill,” Kevan Miller rightfully noted (the B’s were fourth on the kill heading into Sunday’s contest) after the win. “We talked about it before the game they’ve got a powerful power play and they’ve been pretty good lately.

“We wanted to make sure we focused on having a good start and we just kind of rolled with it.”

But what was really impressive of the kill’s afternoon was that one of them came with both Liles and McQuaid unavailable for Claude Julien, as the Bruins rolled with a severely shorthanded inexperienced Colin Miller and Torey Krug pairing to keep the Bolts at bay on the Bolts’ second opportunity.

- With Hedman’s goal scored with under three minutes left in the third, Tuukka Rask lost a shutout with under five minutes to go in the third period for the fourth time this season.

“Well good thing I don’t have a bonus for that,” Rask joked of losing another shutout. “It’s alright, it’s just a tough bounce there again but more than anything we kind of let down in the third. We stopped stopping for pucks and were kind of circling around a little bit and gave them too much space there, but we were very opportunistic today and got some goals, which is great.”

- Some good news? Chara did skate by himself early Sunday morning. The 39-year-old captain has missed three consecutive games, but Sunday’s win did snap a streak of four straight losses without the captain in the lineup dating back to 2014-15. And while that figure is nice, the Bruins would rather snap the streak of games without Chara in the lineup, to be honest.

Up next

The Bruins will travel to Philadelphia for a Tuesday night tilt with the Flyers.

This is the first of three meetings between the B’s and Flyers this season.

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