''It's always nice to get a goal, it doesn't happen that often," said Axelsson. ''Izzy and Primeau did all the work on that one."
In dealing with yet another opposition offensive star -- in this case Ilya Kovalchuk -- Boston coach Mike Sullivan employed a different tack than in the previous two contests. Instead of having Axelsson shadow Kovalchuk, as he did with Jaromir Jagr against the Rangers Saturday and Alexander Ovechkin in Washington Monday, he elected to have Axelsson's line, with Primeau and Isbister, match up against Kovalchuk's line, with center Marc Savard and wing Peter Bondra. Defensively, that seemed to work fairly well.
On the road, when a team gets the lead it makes it somewhat easier to get the matchups it wants. To that end, Boston struck first at 15:31 on Marco Sturm's 18th tally of the year. Patrice Bergeron had the initial opportunity, which Lehtonen held off. But when Lehtonen attempted to poke check away a loose puck at the top of the crease, Sturm beat him to it and buried it.
The Thrashers tied it on a power play at 17:10. With Hal Gill off for tripping, Jaroslav Modry fired a shot from just inside the blue line that veteran Scott Mellanby tipped past the glove of Bruins goalie Tim Thomas. It was Mellanby's sixth tally of the year.
Atlanta took a 2-1 lead late in the period on a fluke play. Savard was driving to the net and Gill went down to try to take away any shooting lane. Gill lost his footing and made contact with Thomas in the crease. Savard retained possession of the puck and backhanded a high shot at the net from outside the left post that the goalie tried to snag. Instead, he batted the puck in with 1:25 remaining on the clock.
