Bruins Notes: Danton Heinen’s First Career Hat Trick Highlight Of Boston Win

BOSTON — Danton Heinen led the Boston Bruins past the Montreal Canadiens with his first career hat trick on Saturday night at TD Garden.

The 28-year-old forward scored a goal in each of the three periods to capture the milestone in his 450th career game.

“Yeah, not going to lie, it felt good,” Heinen said. “Hasn’t been going in lately, so it was good to see it go in and just contribute to the two points.”

In the middle of the third period, Charlie Coyle drew a slashing penalty against Canadiens forward Nick Suzuki. Up 8-4, Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery sent Heinen out for some ice time on the man-advantage.

“It was nice,” Heinen said of his coach. “He knew I had two there and then great play by (Morgan Geekie). It was nice of everyone trying to get it for me.”

Montgomery knew the players on the ice would try and set Heinen up for his third goal and was thrilled they came through for him.

“That’s one thing about the Bruins … how unselfish our group is,” Montgomery said. “It’s amazing how everybody cares about everybody else. They continuously went down low to try and get it to Heinen.”

Montgomery added: “It was nice. I’m happy for him, but I’m more happy with the way it developed and the way we continued to try and get him the hat trick.”

The Bruins bench boss noted that Heinen has been producing for Boston even if the puck hasn’t been going in the back of the net but has encouraged him to continue to go to the high danger areas.

“He was fifth most scoring chances, five-on-five on our team the way we track,” Montgomery explained. “He’s doing a lot of good things but he’s not burying (the puck) and I could sense the frustration so it was nice for him to get it.”

Heinen has 17 points (8 goals, 9 assists) in 37 games while averaging 13:37 minutes of ice time.

Along with Heinen, Pavel Zacha also reached a career milestone by scoring his 100th goal in the win.

“It’s great to see Zacha get one,” Montgomery said. “These games, where nine goals, we know we’re going to have them, but over the course of the year, the guys need to score and they feel good about their own game and their confidence with the puck goes way up.”

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Here are more notes from Saturday’s Bruins-Canadiens game:

— David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand both reached markers as well. Pastrnak scored his 30th goal of the season for the third straight year, and Marchand potted his 20th for the 11th consecutive season. Montgomery acknowledged his star players and made sure to give credit to goaltender Linus Ullmark as well.

“It’s nice to see the guys get rewarded for those kinds of things,” Montgomery said. “It’s nice for our goalies to get wins when we’ve given up more goals than we’re accustomed to because they carry us as we know a lot of the season with just how great they’ve been.

“It’s nice to see Linus get a win where we give up four. It’s not his issues; it was our team being loose defensively, but for the players to extend those leads for him.”

— Derek Forbort returned to the lineup for the first time since Dec. 3. The defenseman skated 16:51 minutes of ice time, including 3:03 shorthanded, while registering two shots, one hit and three blocked shots.

“He looked a little rusty to me,” Montgomery said. “I was teasing him. I think he thought he was (Nicklas) Lidström there a couple of times how much he was hanging on the pucks. He’s a wonderful young man. He’s a great teammate. He’ll only get better for us. He knows that we all know that.”

— The Bruins had 16 skaters register a point in the game. Heinen led the way with three, followed by Marchand, Pastrnak, Coyle, Jake DeBrusk and James van Riemsdyk, who all had two.

“I think it talks about the evolution of our team actually growing offensively,” Montgomery said. “I don’t think we ever envisioned having a night like this over the course of 82 games, there’s some outliers, but I thought that we’ve been seeing this coming here for four games. We’re hanging onto pucks. We ended up with high grade A chances. There were numerous tonight.”

— The Bruins continue their five-game homestand when they host the Winnipeg Jets on Monday night. Puck drop from TD Garden is scheduled for 7 p.m. ET, and you can catch all the action, plus an hour of pregame coverage, on NESN.