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SUNRISE Detroit Red Wings Hats Authentic , Fla. (AP) James Reimer found a great way to celebrate his 30th birthday: He tied a season high with 46 saves to lead the Florida Panthers over the Boston Bruins 3-0 on Thursday night.”If that’s what happens on my birthday, I’ll take it every day,” Reimer said.Making his first start in six games, Reimer earned his third shutout of the season. Nick Bjugstad had a goal and an assist, and Vincent Trocheck and Aaron Ekblad also scored. Evgenii Dadonov added two assists.Florida moved within three points of idle New Jersey for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. The Panthers, who have won 11 of 13 at home, have two games in hand on the Devils.”It’s nice to get in a groove, get in a rhythm, when you haven’t played in a long time,” Reimer said. ”It’s big. We’re trying to catch some teams. We’ve got games in hand, which is nice, but those games are useless if you don’t win them.”Anton Khudobin stopped 25 shots for the Bruins, shut out for the first time since their second game of the season, a 4-0 loss to Colorado on Oct. 9. The Bruins are four points behind Atlantic Division leader Tampa Bay Custom Detroit Red Wings Jerseys , with one game in hand on the Lightning.”Give them credit, their goaltender credit, but sometimes it bounces your way, sometimes it doesn’t,” Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy said.The Panthers stretched their lead to 3-0 on a power-play goal by Trocheck with 5:53 left in the second period. Trocheck’s shot from the right circle went top shelf shot over Khudobin. Trocheck leads the team with 27 goals.”We’ve been in this situation before and you’re expecting that we’re going to be back in the game,” Khudobin said. ”But, unfortunately this wasn’t that day.”Aleksander Barkov’s assist gave him 70 points, making him the first Panthers player since Olli Jokinen (71) in 2007-08 with 70 points in a season.”I’ve got to thank my teammates for setting me up and playing really well with me,” Barkov said. ”I wouldn’t be there without them, but we still have 14 games left and all I think about is getting wins and getting to the playoffs.”The division foes will play three more times this season, and the game had the feel of a must-win for the Panthers.”With the race we’re in and the time left in the season, we couldn’t afford to lose two in a row, and we’re going on the road,” coach Bob Boughner said. ”It was important to get back in the win column and get some points on the board.”Ekblad made it 1-0 at 6:25 of the first when he swatted in a rebound out of midair past Khudobin. Dadonov made a cross-ice pass to Bjugstad in front and he pushed in the puck to make it 2-0 at 9:06.Bruins forward David Backes was assessed a match penalty for a first-period hit from behind on Trocheck. Backes didn’t agree with the call.”But it’s one of those things I can’t do anything about www.officialoilers.com ,” he said. ”I watched the rest of the game when I wished I could help my teammates win a game against a good team.”NOTES: Bruins D Zdeno Chara and LW Jake DeBrusk both missed the game with upper-body injuries sustained in Tuesday’s 6-4 win at Carolina. Boston recalled forward Anton Blidh and defenseman Paul Postma from Providence of the AHL. … Panthers D Alexander Petrovic was scratched with a lower-body injury. … C Frank Vatrano faced his former team for the first time since being traded from the Bruins to the Panthers on Feb. 22.UP NEXTBruins: Visit the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday.Panthers: Host the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday.— Jason Botterill has experienced both sides of the spectrum in confronting the challenges of building a competitive NHL team versus trying to sustain one.In Buffalo, the Sabres’ second-year general manager is attempting to rebuild from scratch a team in the midst of a franchise-worst, seven-year playoff drought. In his previous job as assistant GM in Pittsburgh, the test was keeping together a Sidney Crosby-led core of a team that became the first in nearly 20 years to repeat as Stanley Cup champions in 2016-17.Botterill noted the common denominator for both comes down to scouting.“You’re always searching for talent,” Botterill said. “So it gets back to the importance of finding players that are going to join your system.”Teams at the bottom need to stockpile young talent, and hope it eventually jells. The Sabres, for example, enter this season with the top new player to watch in 18-year-old defenseman Rasmus Dahlin , the No. 1 pick in this year’s draft.Other rebuilding teams are counting on their youngsters to make immediate impacts.In Ottawa, the Senators are turning to rookie first-round pick Brady Tkachuk. In Vancouver, there’s center Elias Pettersson. The Carolina Hurricanes, meanwhile, are counting on forward Andrei Svechnikov, the No. 2 pick Edmonton Oilers T-Shirts Authentic , to help a franchise snap a nine-season playoff drought — the NHL’s longest active streak.There’s pressure on the league’s elite, too.Winning teams lack the luxury of high draft picks, and are required to discover hidden gems in the draft and signing European and college free agents.As Penguins GM Jim Rutherford also noted, the NHL’s salary-cap system means successful teams have a more difficult time retaining their own talent.“You want to keep those players, but you can’t,” Rutherford said. “We went through it two years ago when we lost a bunch of real key players. There’s nothing to do about it. You can’t.”Valuable as they were, forward Chris Kunitz, goalie Marc Andre-Fleury, defensemen Eric Fehr and Ian Cole, and in this offseason’s case, forward Conor Sheary, were among the players the Penguins were unable to retain.Hall of Fame coach Scotty Bowman, who won nine Stanley Cup titles between three teams, said the salary cap makes it more difficult to maintain a contender Edmonton Oilers Hoodies Authentic , though it’s not all that different since winning his first championship with the 1973 Montreal Canadiens.“The challenge is you have to have players coming in the front door,” Bowman said. “When I was in Montreal, they had a slogan that was in the dressing room. It said ‘And the kids go marching on.’ That was 50 years ago, but it’s so much more now.”A list of some of the top newcomers (and one familiar returnee) to look out for this season:RASMUS DAHLIN, Buffalo Sabres defensemanHe’s a smooth-skating, heads-up play-making Swedish-born blue-liner, who has shown a fearless ability of jumping into the rush. Dahlin will require time to adapt to the smaller NHL ice surface and has shown signs of being a little too cavalier with the puck in committing turnovers. He is improving as a defender, and expected to quarterback the top power-play unit. The Sabres intend to allow Dahlin to learn from his mistakes in giving him plenty of playing time this year.ELIAS PETTERSSON, Vancouver Canucks centerWith Vancouver’s 2018 first-round draft pick defenseman Quinn Hughes committed to playing this season at Michigan, there’s plenty of buzz over Pettersson, the No. 5 overall pick in 2017. He’s coming off a season in which he helped Vaxjo win the Swedish Elite League championship and earned regular-season and playoff MVP honors.RYAN DONATO, Boston Bruins forwardAfter spending three seasons playing at Harvard for his father, former NHL player Ted Donato, the 22-year-old got a head start on his NHL career by scoring five goals and nine points in 12 games for the Bruins last season.WARREN FOEGELE Edmonton Oilers Hats Authentic , Carolina Hurricanes left wingThough the jury remains out as to whether Svechnikov will spend the entire season in Carolina, the Hurricanes are high on Foegele, their 2014 third-round pick.“He’s what we want in a Hurricane,” first-year coach Rod Brind’Amour told The Charlotte Observer this week. Foegele had two goals and an assist in his first two NHL games last season, and also finished second in AHL Charlotte with 28 goals as a rookie.BRADY TKACHUK, Ottawa Senators forwardSelected with the No. 4 pick in the draft, the son of former NHL star Keith Tkachuk is considered a key building block of a Senators team rebuilding from scratch. At 19, he overcame a slow start in his freshman year at Boston University to score eight goals and 31 points in 40 games. Ottawa’s youth movement also includes Colin White, a 2015 first-round pick, who had two goals and four assists in 21 NHL games last season.ILYA KOVALCHUK, Los Angeles Kings left wingHe’s back. After spending the past five seasons playing in the Kontinental Hockey League, the NHL’s 2001 No. 1 draft pick has returned to North America after signing a three-year contract with the Kings. At 35, Kovalchuk showed he’s not lost a step in splitting two Vegas defenseman and scoring his first preseason goal in a 7-2 loss last week. Kovalchuk has 417 goals and 816 points in 816 career games.