Thornton Does Trick for Sizzling Bruins

Joe Thornton had three goals, and the Boston Bruins remained nearly perfect when he scores, beating the Washington Capitals, 7-4, Saturday night at Boston.

The Bruins, who won for the seventh time in nine games, are 13-0-1 when Thornton scores. It was his second career hat trick.

Bill Guerin scored twice within 46 seconds midway through the second period, and Glen Murray and Rob Zamuner also had goals for Boston.

Chris Simon scored twice for the Capitals.

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New Jersey 2, Carolina 1--Petr Sykora scored twice within five minutes in the second period and Martin Brodeur stopped 22 of 23 shots at Raleigh, N.C.

Southeast Division-leading Carolina has lost two in a row at home after a franchise-record 20 points in December.

Sami Kapanen, second in the league in scoring, and Ron Francis had six-game point streaks ended.

Brodeur improved to 17-5-4 against Carolina.

Bates Battaglia opened the scoring late in the first period.

Detroit 3, Colorado 1--Igor Larionov and Brendan Shanahan scored fewer than two minutes apart early in the third period and the Red Wings extended their home unbeaten streak to six.

The Avalanche played without goaltender Patrick Roy, who sat out for the second consecutive game because of flu. His backup, David Aebischer, faced 35 shots.

Detroit’s Dominik Hasek made 13 saves.

St. Louis 5, Dallas 2--Cory Stillman scored three goals and Doug Weight had four assists at St. Louis.

Stillman scored a goal in every period to record his first hat trick with the Blues and the third of his career.

Keith Tkachuk and Scott Young also scored for St. Louis.

Mike Modano and Jonathan Sim scored for Dallas.

Toronto 3, Ottawa 1--Alexander Mogilny and Darcy Tucker scored power-play goals at Toronto.

Mike Fisher scored a short-handed goal for the Senators, who had a franchise-low 10 shots.

Montreal 4, Calgary 2--Doug Gilmour scored the go-ahead goal 3:43 into the third period at Calgary, Canada, and the Canadiens ended a four-game losing streak.

Gilmour had an assist to pass Guy Lafleur for 16th place on the career scoring list with 1,354 points.

Jose Theodore made 19 saves for Montreal, and Stephane Quintal, Brian Savage and Oleg Petrov scored.

Jarome Iginla and Dave Lowry scored for Calgary.

Vancouver 4, Edmonton 3--Trevor Letowski and Brendan Morrison scored in the third period to rally the Canucks at Edmonton, Canada.

Letowski tied the score, 3-3, at 15:33 then assisted on the winner by Morrison at 17:20.

The Oilers trailed, 2-0, after the first period but took a 3-2 lead on a goal by Jochen Hecht at 7:58 of the third period.

Vancouver’s Dan Cloutier finished with 31 saves.

San Jose 6, Florida 0--Miikka Kiprusoff got his first career shutout, making 28 saves at San Jose for his third victory in four days.

Kiprusoff began the week with consecutive victories over Philadelphia and Phoenix.

Niklas Sundstrom, Mike Ricci and Todd Harvey each had a goal and an assist.