PHILADELPHIA — Their game not in a good place of late, particularly as they attempt to lock down a precious playoff spot, the Bruins took a tiny step in the right direction Sunday, salvaging a point in a 2-1 overtime loss to the Flyers at Xfinity Mobile Center.
Trailing, 1-0, for the majority of the first two periods, the Bruins tied it on Pavel Zacha’s power-play goal at the start of the third, only finally to succumb in OT, with both David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy watching from the penalty box as Porter Martone potted his first career goal with a rare five-on-three strike 2:31 into the extra session.
The “loser” point left the Bruins (43-26-9) with 95 points, affording them a tiny bit of added cushion as they cling to the No. 1 wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference. With four games remaining, including Tuesday’s matchup in Carolina against the mighty WhalerCanes, the Bruins need to fend off a handful of clubs that, as of late Sunday night, could potentially derail their chances of qualifying for the postseason.
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The overtime loss left the Bruins 0-2-1 on a road trip that will wrap up in Raleigh, N.C. They have scored just three goals and landed a low-temp total of 70 shots over 182-plus minutes.
They aren’t scoring enough. They aren’t shooting enough. The condition they are in right now is that of a team in dire need of recapturing the mojo that led them to an astounding month of March (10-3-3).
“Pretty much this whole trip we aren’t scoring many goals,” said Pastrnak, who added an assist, giving him 97 points for the season. “The shots, maybe we need to get more greedy, I guess, go more to the net and start scoring some goals. We can’t rely on our goaltender every night.”
Netminder Joonas Korpisalo turned in, by far, the best Black-and-Gold performance of the afternoon. He had no chance of snuffing out Martone’s winner, but he did turn back a number of Grade-A chances the Flyers — who leapfrogged into a playoff spot — generated in the third period and overtime.
The only other shot to elude Korpisalo was the Flyers’ first of the day, a snipe off the right wing, by Christian Dvorak. Korpisalo then delivered 29 consecutive stops until Martone mashed home the winner, with Pastrnak (hooking) and McAvoy (high-sticking) each getting whistled off within seven seconds of one another.
Martone, 19, was the No. 6 pick in the 2025 draft. He turned pro out of Michigan State just a couple of weeks ago and has fit seamlessly into the lineup. He has brought the boost to the Flyers that Bruins fans hope one day to see from James Hagens, who was Boston’s pick at No. 7 in the same draft.
Martone potted the winner all but 15 seconds after McAvoy was sent off for the high stick. It looked easy, as it should when teed up with an offensive-zone faceoff and holding a two-man advantage in OT. Martone simply dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s, with help from Dvorak and ex-BU phenom Trevor Zegras.
Zacha’s goal, his career-high 29th, pulled the Bruins even, 1-1, only 35 seconds into the third period. It came on the power play — another rarity for the Bruins these days. They have gone 1 for 7 on this trip.
Pastrnak started the scoring play with a one-time blast from above the left wing circle, the puck squibbing free off the glove of ex-Bruins netminder Dan Vladar. An alert Casey Mittelstadt, as he was skating by the right post, tapped a backhander toward the crease and Zacha provided the finishing forehand tap.
“He looked at me quick,” noted Zacha, now with 11 power-play goals this season, matching his total haul on the advantage for his first three years in Black and Gold. “He’s a great passer. He probably could have scored it himself, but he gave it to me. A nice play by him.”
With 97 points, Pastrnak has four games remaining to collect his fourth consecutive 100-point season.
Coach Marco Sturm reunited the Morgan Geekie-Elias Lindholm-Pastrnak line as his No. 1 trio, noting his need to get Geekie going. The club’s top goal scorer has not scored since March 5, a string of 17 games. He did not score, but he landed two on net and fired a team-high seven times.
“I think that was the biggest point,” said Sturm, referring to putting the big line together again. “This is the time now. This is the time to show up. So we wanted to give him another shot.”
Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at kevin.dupont@globe.com.