Have the Bruins already found a winning trio on revamped 4th line?

"They were our best line tonight.”

When Don Sweeney and the Bruins’ top brass charted out sweeping changes this offseason, Thursday’s 6-4 win over the Canadiens might have been the result they forecasted.

Elias Lindholm — signed for $54.25 million on July 1 in hopes he’d anchor Boston’s top line — knocked home his first goal in a black-and-gold sweater while adding a pair of helpers against the Habs. The 29-year-old pivot has already recorded four points (one goal, three assists) in two games this season.

Nikita Zadorov — signed on the same day as Lindholm to a $30 million contract — has been advertised as a physical deterrent on the back end. The 6-foot-6 defenseman has landed eight hits already with Boston, while adding a pair of assists in Thursday’s win.

And just as Sweeney and his staff predicted, a Bruins fourth line featuring a pair of offseason additions in Mark Kastelic and Cole Koepke shredded Montreal — both on the forecheck and on the scoresheet.

Perhaps it’s a stretch to expect a pair of checking-line forwards like Kastelic and Koepke to provide the same impact as Boston’s high-priced pickups in Lindholm and Zadorov.

But through two games, Jim Montgomery and the Bruins seem to have struck gold with this fleet-footed grouping on the fourth line.

“They were unbelievable,” Lindholm said of the fourth line. “Obviously, I thought they played really well last game, too, and created a lot of energy. They’re all big bodies, skate well, and are tough to play against. So obviously they got rewarded and deserved to score a couple of goals. They were our best line tonight.”

It’s hard to argue against that sentiment.

On a night where 10 different Bruins recorded at least a point, the grouping of Kastelic, Koepke, and Johnny Beecher made the greatest impact.

Kastelic, who entered Thursday with just 14 goals over 144 career games, lit the lamp twice in the win. With just three points etched into his NHL tenure across 27 games, Koepke equaled that scoring output (one goal, two assists) in a tidy 7:20 of ice time against Montreal.

Add in a helper from Beecher (his second in as many games), and this reworked line has brought pace, physicality, and an unexpected scoring spark further down Boston’s lineup so far in 2024-25.

“I think we play with a lot of speed, and we’ve all got pretty good size,” Kastelic said of his line’s production out of the gate. “So if we can get it to the net, cause some chaos, a lot of times good things will happen.”

Kastelic, acquired by Boston as part of the Linus Ullmark trade in June, was expected to be a fourth-line fixture entering training camp.

Given his size (6-foot-4, 226 pounds), faceoff prowess (56.4 percent) and speed, the former Ottawa forward looked the part as a play-driving, tone-setting presence down the middle.

The same can’t be said for Koepke in terms of his viability as an everyday NHLer. Signed to a one-year, two-way contract the same day as Lindholm and Zadorov, Koepke was initially projected more as organizational depth or a top-six regular in Providence.

Despite some strong seasons in the AHL ranks, Koepke struggled to break through at the next level over four seasons in the Tampa Bay Lightning organization. The 6-foot-1 forward’s wheels and tenacity while hounding pucks made him an early standout in camp.

But replicating that in game action was another endeavor entirely. But so far, Koepke’s motor has powered Boston’s fourth line into a momentum-shifting unit.

Koepke’s straight-line approach led to immediate returns on Thursday.

With a little under seven minutes to go in the opening period, Koepke glided past Montreal defenseman Arber Xhekaj in the offensive zone — putting the puck on his backhand as he cut inside and carried the biscuit right onto goalie Cayden Primeau’s doorstep.

His attempt to jam the puck past Montreal’s goalie wasn’t successful, but Koepke’s drive unraveled the Habs’ defensive structure in short order. Seconds later, Kastelic snapped a puck just over Primeau’s glove to knot the game at 2-2.

Koepke’s hustle once again resulted in TD Garden’s goal horn firing off a salvo in the second period. After springing Beecher for a quality look, the 26-year-old winger followed through on the play, tucking the loose puck past Primeau’s pads to give Boston a 5-2 cushion at the time.

“Kastelic scored [47] goals in junior hockey, so it’s something that he can do,” Montgomery noted. “And it was just nice to see how hard they went to the net — like the Koepke goal, that’s Johnny Beecher taking it hard to the net.

“And Kastelic’s first goal — Koepke originally took the puck hard to the net that created offensive-zone time. So it’s something that we feel that with the speed and the size of our team, we want to do more of. It’s not easy to do. But that was a good sign.”

The Bruins aren’t expecting players like Koepke and Kastelic to stuff the stat sheet with any sort of regularity this year. But even when pucks aren’t banking off goalies and into twine, this grouping has the skating ability to routinely make life miserable for opponents on the forecheck.

Through two games, the Bruins have tilted the ice heavily in their favor when the Beecher-Kastelic-Koepke grouping has been deployed. In the 12:16 of 5-on-5 ice time that that trio has skated so far this year, the Bruins hold a 12-3 edge in shots on goal and have outscored teams, 4-0.

The scoring isn’t sustainable, but the Bruins are hoping the willingness to land welts carries through from now until the spring.

Just as Sweeney and Co. drew it up.

“It’s something that we think our line can utilize well is just get it in deep, skate fast and kind of wear them down and good things will happen if you play the game the right way,” Koepke explained. “The puck was on our side tonight.”

Conor Ryan is a staff writer covering the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox for Boston.com, a role he has held since 2023.