Boston Bruins: Rich Peverley Fitting in with Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand

If Mark Recchi still does not yet feel entitled to settle in to a relaxing, hard-earned retirement, he ought to be a few strides closer following Saturday night’s game at TD Garden.

In the wake of the team’s 4-1 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning, one of the Boston Bruins’ top two forward lines appears to be in good hands as Rich Peverley fills Recchi’s skates.

The way Recchi’s last two linemates, Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand, worked with Peverley showed little indication of drastic change beyond the name and digits on the back of the troika’s eldest constituent.

In just their second regular-season outing as a unit, the three combined for five points and a plus-6 rating as Peverley bookended the scoring. In addition, he tied Tyler Seguin and Zdeno Chara for the team lead with five shots on goal while Bergeron and Marchand landed two apiece. And Peverley and Marchand combined to take credit for three of the Bruins’ six takeaways.

Not that far a cry from the Bergeron-Marchand-Recchi formula that singlehandedly decided Game 7 of last year’s Stanley Cup Finals, is it?

And even before Peverley broke the ice early in the second period and effectively iced the victory midway through the third, one ought to have sensed some production on the immediate horizon.

Through a scoreless first period, the whole line was flaunting the same sort of hunger that it had when Recchi was a member. And whether a play got results on the scoreboard or not, each linemate had a turn shipping the puck while the other two crashed the net.

In the seventh minute of action, Peverley alertly extracted a fugitive puck from the far corner and pinballed it off the stick of a Tampa backchecker to Bergeron in the slot. If Bergeron had had more time to lasso that puck and take a more effective shot, the whole play might have been a little more rewarding.

On the line’s next shift, Peverley cut into the same area of the ice as before. From there, he essentially shot for a rebound, a rebound that Marchand forked after while Bergeron jumped in for support against three Lightning skaters and goaltender Mathieu Garon.

Finally, at 2:04 of the middle frame, the three linemates converted. While Bergeron and Peverley cut to the dirty-nose zone on Garon’s porch, Marchand churned with the puck around the net. His shot wiped off the post right before Peverley, whose presence was practically unacknowledged by all Tampa Bay personnel fixated on Bergeron and the puck-carrier Marchand.

In turn, Peverley made his grit look like facility as he absorbed the rebound and tapped it into a gaping goal-mouth for the 1-0 lead.

When he connected again, Peverley likewise punished the Lightning for what, at least on camera, came off as inattentiveness. Upon handing the puck off to Bergeron along the near wall, he cut diagonally to the cage while Bergeron looped over to the far side of the net.

As Bolts back-checkers Martin St. Louis, Eric Brewer and Victor Hedman turned their backs on Peverley, he shadowed them en route to the goal, where he absorbed Bergeron’s return feed and made another strike look easy.

With that, Peverley has now had one fairly uneventful and one outstandingly fruitful evening with his new depth-chart associates. If their chemistry retains a lengthy shelf life, there should be a satisfactory number of performances similar to Saturday.

Additionally, even when he is not throwing ink on the score sheet, Peverley’s valuable versatility should pay off. There will be times when the full-time pivot Bergeron is ejected from the face-off dot or otherwise unavailable to take the draw.

And already, Peverley has taken 10 face-offs in two games, winning half of them. He was just as proficient in that department on Saturday as Bergeron, who swiped eight out of 16 dropped pucks.

At this rate, as early as it may be, Peverley is on pace for a season of symbiotic success. With more results will come more stability on his new line. That, in turn, will result in more ice time and thus more opportunities to saturate his statistics and increase his chances for a career year.