The beauty of the home-and-home is that if your team gets shellacked 5-0 on the road, you can always come home.

On Saturday, the Bruins were outscored, out-shot and outplayed by the Atlanta Thrashers, who snapped a two-game losing streak by putting up a five-spot at home. Nine different players recorded a point and it was the first shutout for the Thrashers in the history of the series. More importantly, it moved Atlanta to within a game of the .500 mark (19-19-1) through 39 games.

And for 20 minutes on New Year’s Eve, it looked to be much of the same as the Thrash and Bash jumped out to an early 2-0 lead. The Bruins appeared to be headed towards a seventh straight defeat, their longest such streak in a decade. To compare, the other three local professional teams have lost a combined seven games since September 30th.

But a trio of second period goals changed both the momentum and the game as the B’s put up a five-spot of their own en route to a 5-2 victory, ending a six-game losing streak in front of 17,565 fans at TD Banknorth Garden.

“Someone said in the dressing room before the game that we’re almost at the must-win point,” Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas said. “And then someone else said that we are.”

“We can’t get too high now,” forward Marc Savard said. “We won one and now we’ve got to focus on our next game. We all wanted to have a good game and finish 2007 well.”

Bobby Holik opened the scoring for Atlanta with a power-play goal just over nine minutes into the first period, quickly putting a crooked number on the scoreboard and jumping out to a 9-3 edge in shots over the first ten minutes. It was a shot Thomas had a read on, getting a piece of it with his pads, but never had the positioning to keep the puck from trickling into the back of the net.

Colin Stuart, who had an assist in his first NHL game, made it 2-0 with his first career goal with 6:42 mark off a pass from Todd white. On Saturday, Stuart became the first player to make his NHL debut against his brother, Bruins defenseman Mark, in 25 years, since Randy Moller (Quebec) faced off against his brother Mike (Buffalo).

“Getting that first NHL goal is exciting,” Stuart said. “But it would’ve made it more exciting if we came out of here with a win.”

Boston would cut the lead in half with 15:20 left in the second, ending a wild sequence in which Chris Thorburn was called for holding, Lehtonen was caught out of position trying to play the puck like a defenseman and eventually ending in a Dennis Wideman slap-shot for the 18,000th tally in club history.

“It’s a great thing for the organization and the franchise,” Wideman said. It’s a testament to how long this team’s been around and how good they’ve been.

P.J. Axelsson would tie the game 34 seconds later when he deflected Zdeno Chara’s shot from the point past Lehtonen and Boston would take the lead minutes later when the other Stuart brother (Mark) added a six-on-five goal with Steve McCarthy set to head to the sin bin for a take down of Glen Metropolit. It marked the second time this season a pair of brothers scored goals in a game this season. Marcel and Marian Hossa pulled off the feat in Atlanta’s 4-2 victory over the Rangers on Dec. 7.

The Thrashers’ best chance of the period came with 6:31 left as Ilya Kovalchuk broke free with Wideman on his tail, but the defenseman got enough body contact to keep the forward’s shot low and to the right, allowing Thomas to get good padding on the puck.

Boston added two third period goals, Phil Kessel cleaned up Andrew Ference’s shot in the slot. The second of the day for the Bruins power-play, which came into the game 0 for their last 9 on the man advantage. And Matt Lashoff’s first goal of the season, a slapper from the point, came off a nice cross-ice pass from Chara to finish the scoring.

“They play such an aggressive penalty kill,” Chara said. “The longer you keep it along the boards the worse it’s going to get for the power play. We just made one or two passes and the first chance we had, we put it on the net.”

The Thrashers were once again out-shot (37-30) for the 34th time in 40 games. It was the club’s first loss in nine games when leading after the first period and their third loss in 15 games when scoring first. Atlanta dropped to 19-14-1 since General Manager Don Waddell took over the head coaching duties from Bob Hartley on Oct. 17.

Game Notes

The Thrashers’ offense starts with Kovalchuk, who leads the league with 32 goals this season. He’s scored 32 of Atlanta’s 107 goals this season. (29.9%) The league record for the highest percentage of goals scored by a single player is 29.5% set by Pavel Bure in 2000-01.

Kovalchuk has scored six goals and three assists in his last seven games against the Bruins.

“If you give him some space and give him some room and you let him skate and shoot the puck the way he can. He’s going to do a lot of damage,” Bruins Head Coach Claude Julien said. “No doubt he’s a guy you’ve got to pay attention too.”

Tim Thomas is now 1-2-1 in five appearances since missing six games due to a groin injury.