The Austin Bruins are no stranger to having Swedish players on their roster and two players from that country helped give the Bruins a big boost as they beat the Bismarck Bobcats (6-7 overall) 4-2 in Riverside Arena Friday night.

Jaccob Kullberg, a rookie from Kallered, Sweden, scored two third period goals and Alex Pettersson, a second year player from Gothenburg, Sweden, had three assists in the win.

The Bruins fired off 42 shots on goal.

“We just had to keep shooting the puck, because we knew we would find the net eventually,” Pettersson said.

The last time the Bruins and Bobcats met was in the NAHL Central finals last season and the Bruins won that game to get to their first Robertson Cup. After Saturday’s game, the Bobcats will not make another trip to Riverside Arena for the rest of the season.

“We tried to pump up the [new] guys as much as we can, but they know it’s a big game and they know we played Bismarck for the [Central Division] championship last year,” Pettersson said. “We didn’t have to say too much.”

The Bruins had lost their last three games before Friday, and they trailed 2-1 in the second period to the Bobcats. Trevor Boyd scored to tie the game in the second for Austin (7-2-4 overall) and Kullberg scored with 6:55 left in the game to give Austin the lead for good. He added an empty netter to make it 4-2 with 1:12 left in the game.

Kullberg said Pettersson has served as a mentor for him by helping him learn how to speak English how to act in the locker room.

“Alex helps me out a lot and he talks to me all of the time,” Kullberg said. “It was fun to score those two goals and it was fun to win tonight.”

Austin head coach Chris Tok said the team was giving Kullberg time to develop, but the first-year forward had some big steps to make early on.

“He had to make a pretty big jump,” Tok said of Kullberg. “He started off extremely slow. We told him we’d give him a six week tryout, and I told him the other day that it was good that we gave him six weeks, because after three weeks he wasn’t looking so good. He’s been working hard and tonight he wasn’t afraid to go into the small areas. He’s a little reminiscent of [Guillaume] Leclerc last year.”

Bruins’ goalie Zach Driscoll picked up his fourth win in seven starts in the net as he stopped 19 shots. Driscoll started a little slow, but he finished the game strong.

“After he got settled in there he did a really good job of not giving up too many rebounds and he got whistles to help us stop and regather ourselves,” Tok said.

SCORING SUMMARY

Bismarck 1 1 0 — 2

Austin 1 1 2 — 4

First period

(A) Jake Arroyo (Alex Pettersson, Jacob Kullberg) 7:04

(B) Matt Perry (short handed) 10:42

Second period

(B) Perry (Tony German, Oskars Batna) 3:42

(A) Trevor Boyd 16:11

Third period

(A) Kullberg (Cory Dunn, Alex Pettersson) 13:05

(A) Kullberg (Pettersson) 18:48

Power plays: Austin — 0-for-4; Bismarck — 0-for-5

Shots: Austin — 49; Bismarck — 21