BOSTON – Scoring goals was in and of itself a bit of a small victory for a Bruins team that’s struggled to finish off chances this season, and adding the two points for a 4-1 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning at TD Garden was icing on the goal-scoring cake.
The Bruins hope that the offensive floodgates are now open after watching Dominic Moore and Jimmy Hayes kick in a pair of goals from the fourth line, David Backes and the B’s power play contribute a key second period score to extend and finally David Pastrnak scored yet again, his 13th goal in 17 games, to finalize things in the third period. It all added up to a well-rounded offensive performance from a Black and Gold club that simply hasn’t scored enough, and should be much better than a team ranked 25th in the league in total offense.
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Claude Julien said his team simply fell back into some good habits like gaining a presence around the net, and firing more pucks at the net.
“I think just we went back to a lot of things that we had done so well before. We’re throwing more pucks at the net. We were there around the net. We were not looking to pass around and play the perimeter o-zone game,” said Julien. “We really got to the inside, and we made things happen there. So, some things we were doing earlier in the year, and it kind of slipped away from us, but we did it better tonight.”
The caveat is that the Bruins thought things were looking up for them offensively after they posted a good number of goals against Winnipeg a week ago, but that still hasn’t really been the case at this point. But Torey Krug said he had a different feeling about Sunday afternoon’s matinee while in the middle of a three-game losing streak, and he had faith that Boston’s best players would come through for the team.
Boston Bruins
“Before the game, I had that feeling where we would come out and show a strong game. It was just one of those moments where you know you lose a few games in a row, and it was time to step up and our best players were good tonight,” said Krug. “Tuuks [Tuukka Rask] did a heck of a job so it was a good game overall. And there are definitely some errors we can clean up, as always we are looking to improve our game but hopefully we can bottle up this energy and keep it going.”
With games this week against non-playoff teams in the East like the Flyers, Hurricanes and Sabres, now is the time for the Bruins to perhaps get well offensively, and start collecting a confidence level that should already be there given Boston’s player personnel.