Like their win in Arizona 24 hours prior, the Bruins took care of business against a team in the bottom of the Western Conference standings.

Against a team that is dead last in goals scored (27), the Bruins shut down the Avalanche’s struggling offense. Though they managed to squeak out a 2-0 win thanks to David Krejci’s first period tally and Dominic Moore’s empty netter, this was another instance where the final score wasn’t an indicator of how the Bruins dominated play against the Avs.

The Bruins ended their five-game-in-seven-day stretch with a record of 4-1. They’ll conclude their three-game road trip on Thursday in Minnesota for their final matchup of the season against the Wild.

Here is what we learned as the Black and Gold sit in second place in the Atlantic Division at 10-6-0.

Rask gets light workload on back-to-back

With their second set of back-to-backs and Anton Khudobin’s return from an arm injury coming soon, one would’ve figured that head coach Claude Julien would’ve given the nod to Zane McIntyre for at least one more start before he likely gets sent down to Providence again. Instead, given that Tuukka Rask had a less than taxing night in Arizona the night before, Julien gave the nod to his stalwart for the second straight night.

Rask’s workload was even lighter than the night before as he stopped all 20 Avalanche shots en route to his third shutout of the 2016-17 campaign. Some of the saves he made were pivotal, including his stop on A.J. Greer midway through the third period to keep the Bruins ahead by one.

For the most part, Rask watched as a spectator as the Bruins kept pressuring Semyon Varlamov all night. With a significant advantage in offensive zone time, the B’s outshot the Avs 46-20, including a 24-6 outburst in the middle stanza.

“That’s how you win a road game,” Rask told reporters following the victory. “We said after the game, that’s exactly how you want to play on the road. A pretty much mistake-free game, very proud of our effort. I can’t recall any real breakdowns for us. We kept them on the outside and really limited their scoring chances and rushes.”

Bruins defense has their best week of the season

Of course, a good defense can help a good goaltender out. Unlike other nights where Rask had to save their bacon, the Bruins defense looked competent all week long and minimized their mistakes. Even when there were blunders, they weren’t costly.

In a span of one week, the Bruins allowed six goals, recorded two shutouts and in a couple of instances saw their opponents fire 20 or fewer shots on goal twice.

From the decision making to the transition game, the Bruins defense had one of their better weeks of the season. Although the defense as a whole is still a work in progress, this week was certainly an encouraging sign for the seven Bruins’ blue-liners that suited up.

Lineup changes a luxury for Julien

Anytime a coach makes changes to their lineups, the oft-driven storyline is the player needing to respond to a message. That was the case when Julien scratched Matt Beleskey last week. Since then, the second-year Bruin tallied his first goal of the season and is developing chemistry with Riley Nash and Austin Czarnik on the third line.

In the tail end of their second set of back to backs on Sunday night, Julien made a couple of changes. But unlike the Beleskey scratch, the 10th-year Bruins bench boss had the luxury of plugging a couple of players to the lineup that hasn’t gotten many reps through the first 16 games.

One of those players, Joe Morrow, took over Colin Miller’s spot on the third defensive pairing with John-Michael Liles. The other was a recent Providence callup, Sean Kuraly, who filled in for Tim Schaller on the fourth line with Dominic Moore and Jimmy Hayes in his second career NHL game.

Kuraly and Morrow each fired three shots on goal and tallied one hit in respective ice times of 8:58 and 15:20.