The Bruins lost Aaron Ward after the defenseman, returning from an ankle injury after a four-game absence, skated only two shifts for 62 seconds of ice time. Later in the first period, Petteri Nokelainen departed with an upper-body injury and did not return.
And before tightening things up in the final period, the Bruins ran around too much in their zone and forced Tim Thomas (30 saves) to turn in a far busier effort than he should have been asked to log.
"Maybe we didn't make the strong plays all the time," said coach Claude Julien. "We're trying to work ourselves out of a little bit of a funk. You're going to say it's 7-3 and we're still doing some good things. The way we played the month of November, I guess the expectations are high for everybody. I think that's why we have a tendency to look for all those sloppy plays at times. There's still a lot of good things going on, but we have to kind of settle ourselves down a little bit to make some stronger plays at times."
The Bruins tucked their first shot of the game behind Pavelec at 3:31. With David Krejci stickhandling on the right wing, defenseman Mark Stuart joined the rush, drove to the net, and was in perfect position to receive the center's feed and tap the puck past Pavelec.
Thirty-seven ticks later, the Bruins put their second shot on goal. Pavelec failed to stop that one as well. The play started when Matt Hunwick won the puck off the left wall and slid a pass to Nokelainen. The fourth-line forward flipped a shot on net that was deflected by Stephane Yelle past Pavelec at 4:08.
Pavelec was chased at 8:41 after Zdeno Chara, shaking off the check of winger Slava Kozlov, drove behind the Atlanta net and curled a backhand shot on goal that the netminder couldn't handle. Phil Kessel was credited with an assist, extending his scoring streak to 14 games.
Pavelec's bottom line in the first period: three goals allowed on four shots.
"It was one of those games where I wouldn't have stopped a beach ball," said Pavelec, who came back in for 8:47 in the third period. "If I want to play in the NHL, I have to be better than that."
