BOSTON -- Matt Cooke survived his evening at the TD Garden.

Marc-Andre Fleury's streak of non-shutouts did not.

Easy to see why the Penguins could not have asked for much more out of their 3-0 victory against Boston Thursday night.

"We lost a tough game [Wednesday] in New Jersey, and our focus was to win the game," Cooke said. "And we did it in a pretty convincing fashion, I think."

Oh, Cooke absorbed a little abuse from the crowd and a bit of punishment in a fight with Bruins enforcer Shawn Thornton, but nothing that did significant damage.

And Fleury hardly had to be at his best -- he was forced to stop just 17 shots, barely a period's worth of work some nights -- to record his first shutout in 63 games, but that was a detail on which there was no point in dwelling.

Why sweat the small stuff when you have authored not only your first shutout in nearly a year, but your team's first in Boston since Les Binkley did it Jan. 28, 1968?

"It was too long," Fleury said. "But I'm definitely happy to finally, finally get one."

Their time between shutouts in this city was a lot longer than their time without sole possession of first place in the Atlantic Division. The Penguins' victory, coupled with New Jersey's 2-1 shootout loss in Toronto, put them one point ahead of the Devils.

The Penguins played without center Evgeni Malkin, who has a bruised right foot, for the second consecutive game, but enforcer Eric Godard returned after missing 16 because of a groin injury. Godard was used sparingly, taking five shifts for a total of three minutes, 31 seconds.

Godard's presence gave Penguins coach Dan Bylsma a nuclear option of sorts had the pregame hype of rampant mayhem stemming from Cooke's blindside hit to the head of Boston center Marc Savard during a game at Mellon Arena March 7 come to pass.

Cooke defused that danger early in the game. He went over the boards for his first shift at 1:52 of the first period and, six seconds later, was trading punches with Boston enforcer Shawn Thornton.

That Thornton, who has three inches and a dozen pounds on Cooke, won the fight is beyond dispute. So is the fact that, by fighting him, Cooke vented much of the emotion that had built up in the Bruins and the crowd.

"Matt took everything into his own hands," Penguins winger Alexei Ponikarovsky said. " 'If you guys want to fight me, let's do it now.' He shut it down right there. We started playing after that."

And, much of the time, dominating.

Tyler Kennedy got the Penguins the only goal they needed when he buried a shot behind Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask at 8:34 of the opening period for his first in 19 games.

The Penguins controlled play throughout the second period -- they kept the puck in the Boston end for the first 111 seconds of one power play -- and Ponikarovsky contributed an insurance goal when he deflected in a Kris Letang shot with 14.1 seconds to go before the intermission.

Mike Rupp lost a fight to Zdeno Chara, the Bruins' hulking defenseman, midway through the second, but earned a measure of revenge at 5:14 of the third by blocking a shot in the defensive zone and lugging the puck up ice before beating Rask from near the right dot.

The fans who had entered the building intent on jeering at Cooke eventually turned on the Bruins, who -- especially with Savard out, perhaps for the rest of the season -- are in danger of losing their grip on one of the final Eastern Conference playoff spots.

"It's tough, but it's understandable," Rask said. "If I was a fan, I'd be doing the same thing."

Boston fans certainly had plenty with which to be unhappy.

The Bruins were outshot, 31-17. Outhit, 20-19. Held scoreless on four power plays.

"It was a great team game," Rupp said. "We came together. We stuck together. We just came out and played our game."

And did it against a backdrop that might well have distracted another club.

"We knew what we had to do," Kennedy said. "We have a very mature team, and we know how to play games like this."

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