5 takeaways from Bruins' wild statement win over Panthers

Two fights in the first seven minutes. Seven misconducts. One hundred twenty-six total penalty minutes. Yeah, Sunday afternoon was a typical Bruins-Panthers game.

More importantly for the Bruins, though, it was a convincing 4-1 victory in a big divisional game against arguably their biggest rival currently. It was also their fourth straight win.. Here are five takeaways from the game:

Fight Day at the Garden

If there was any concern about this being a sleepy Sunday matinee, Nikita Zadorov and Brady Tkachuk made sure everyone was awake by dropping the gloves right off the opening faceoff for a spirited bout.

It's something both combatants have embraced in big games in the past (think Zadorov vs. Montreal last year, or Tkachuk in the 4 Nations Face-Off two years ago), and a clear sign of the importance they placed on this matchup.

Round 2 of Fight Day at the Garden came six minutes later when Mark Kastelic dropped the gloves with former Bruin Garnet Hathaway, a fight that saw both players land punches before Hathaway got the wrestling takedown. The Bruins were already leading 2-0 by that point, so the Boston crowd was sufficiently juiced for the day.

This was just the second divisional game of the season for the Bruins, and the first since an Oct. 5 loss to Ottawa. Marco Sturm said before the game that if his team wasn't excited for this one, they had a problem. Well, they were plenty excited, so no problem there.

"It was great," Sturm said of the way his team handled themselves. "Big Z started us right away the right way. Kasty followed. Even Jeanno [Tanner Jeannot], didn't get a fight, but especially those three guys just kept everything calm. They just let us play the game. It's a great feeling. These guys, we probably don't talk enough about them, because it's still in the game. They did an outstanding job today against a very gritty and tough opponent."

Elias Lindholm, Morgan Geekie stay hot

Surprise, surprise: Elias Lindholm and Morgan Geekie both scored again. Lindholm opened the scoring 4:50 into the game when he took a pass from linemate Casey Mittelstadt and fired a shot from the high slot that trickled behind Jacob Markstrom and just over the line. The play was initially called no-goal, but was overturned upon review.

Lindholm now has a four-game point streak, with three goals in that span. He's up to seven goals and 15 points on the season, both good for second on the team behind only David Pastrnak (who had two assists Sunday and is now up to 24 points in 18 games). Oh, and Lindholm also won a whopping 22 of the 32 faceoffs he took Sunday.

Geekie, meanwhile, has now scored a goal in four straight games. Sunday's goal came on a one-time blast during a 5-on-3 power play late in the first period and extended Boston's lead to 3-0. He had five shots on goal and six shot attempts Sunday, and has now had at least five shot attempts in five of his last six games. Prior to that, he had eclipsed that mark just twice in 12 games. It's worth repeating: Good things happen when Geekie shoots the puck.

Welcome back, Mikey Eyssimont

With James Hagens out a few weeks after taking a crosscheck to the back on Thursday, the Bruins recalled Eyssimont from AHL Providence to slot in on the wing on a line with Geekie and Fraser Minten. In his season debut Sunday, Eyssimont made an immediate impact with a goal 6:11 into the game with a strong take to the front after spinning off a check behind the net.

Eyssimont, a 30-year-old veteran who spent all of last season with the Bruins, actually had a really good training camp and preseason, but there just wasn't a spot for him on Boston's 23-man roster with the B's making room for youngsters like Hagens, Matt Poitras and Frederic Brunet. There seemed to be a chance that another team would claim him off waivers, but he wound up clearing and getting sent to Providence.

Instead of pouting about it, Eyssimont went down to the AHL and dominated, scoring a league-leading 13 goals in eight games. On Friday, he recorded his third hat trick of the season. Now, with an injury and an opportunity popping up, he's back in Boston, presumably for at least the next few weeks.

Eyssimont, by the way, played with a bubble to protect his face Sunday. Last week, he got hit in the mouth with a puck and lost five and a half teeth. "It was a good one," he said Sunday.

Jeremy Swayman shines

All of the above might grab more headlines, but it has to be noted that the Bruins' best player Sunday was their goalie. Swayman made a season-high 40 saves on 41 shots, including 17 saves in the first period alone.

According to Natural Stat Trick, Swayman was a perfect 12-for-12 on high-danger shots, and he finished with 3.52 goals saved above expected. That's his second-best mark of the season, behind only a plus-4.72 effort vs. Utah on Oct. 8.

"Sometimes I feel like we don't even talk enough about our goalies, especially Sway, even Mikey [DiPietro]," Sturm said. "These guys have been so good. So good. They're getting us points and opportunities to win every night. … They've been awesome."

According to Moneypuck, Swayman and DiPietro have combined for 14.8 goals saved above expected on the season, the best of any goalie tandem in the NHL. The Bruins' .919 team save percentage is also best in class.

An 'F' for the refs

Criticizing the refs is often pretty lame, but sometimes a crew is so bad that you just have to call it out. Sunday's game, with Brandon Blandina and Pierre Lambert in charge, was one of those times.

It felt like they had never reffed a rivalry game before, and had no clue what to let go and what to crack down as the temperature rose.

After two early fights, they apparently thought that making ticky-tack calls was the way to settle things down. Fraser Minten got hit with two of the softer calls you'll see in the first period, one for a pretty benign "crosscheck" that you see a dozen times a game, and one for a barely perceptible bump that apparently qualified as "interference."

Then at the end of the second, they decided to hand out four 10-minute misconducts in eight seconds, all for fairly typical post-whistle scrumming. Hampus Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov were on the receiving end of those calls for Boston, so the Bruins were actually down to four defensemen for half of the third period. It was almost three, as Charlie McAvoy had gotten pulled from the game for a concussion check late in the second period. Fortunately, he got cleared to return for the third.

Ultimately, the officiating really didn't have any role in deciding the game. The Bruins got up early and really never looked back. But Blandina and Lambert certainly did plenty to disrupt the game's flow and help turn it into a lengthy affair that clocked in just under three hours (2:57 to be exact), a full 20 minutes longer than the average NHL game.