BOSTON – This was supposed to be a point in the regular season where the Boston Bruins would struggle just a little bit.
They were just starting a stretch of playing a grueling 16 games in 31 days during the month, and already watching the attrition from that gauntlet take a chunk out of their roster with Patrice Bergeron, Charlie McAvoy and David Backes missing from the action. Instead of succumbing to that adversity and hitting a lull in what’s been a big ball of success since mid-November, the Bruins seem to have kicked things up another notch.
They’re not playing as consistently as they did in their dominant three-month stretch of performances from mid-November to mid-February, but they are blowing teams out in impressive fashion with less than a month to go until the playoffs. On their just-concluded six game homestand, the Bruins outscored their opponents by a 30-19 basis, got the power play working again with a 10-for-26 (38 percent success rate) performance over those six games and flat out smoked both the Penguins and Blackhawks in blowout fashion.
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They became only the seventh team in NHL history to sweep an entire six game homestand, and joined the Flyers (1984-85), Oilers (1986-87), Red Wings (2011-2012), LA Kings (2014-2015) and Florida Panthers (2015-16 and this season) as the only teams to have turned that impressive trick.
Of all the things that the Bruins have accomplished this season, pulling together a six game winning streak with an undermanned crew and a number of new trade deadline parts might be one of the most impressive.
Boston Bruins
“That’s the beauty of our team we do things together. We decided after a few minutes in the third that enough is enough, let’s start playing our hockey,” said Tuukka Rask. “It looked good. They’re [Chicago] a good team, you’ve got to give them credit, they make plays when you give them time and space. They made some plays, but we never quit.
“It depends which turn the game takes, you get up by two and the other team comes back and it’s 2-2 in the first period. It’s already high-scoring game at least in my eyes. Things kind of just go back and forth from there but like against Philly they play a heavy, tight game and so did we…we came out on top. We’ve shown that we can play every kind of style of hockey and I think that’s not concerning. I think that’s more of a good sign in a team.”
As Rask referenced, the Bruins headed into the third period trailing in the game and then exploded for four unanswered goals in the final 20 minutes when they finally decided to stop toying with the Blackhawks.
Brad Marchand stepped up and has produced five goals and 11 points in the six games since Patrice Bergeron went down ahead of the just-concluded home stretch at the Garden, and Torey Krug, Riley Nash and David Pastrnak have all averaged nearly two points per game during Boston’s six game winning streak.
The Bruins certainly aren’t playing airtight hockey right now and it feels a little foreign given how the prior B’s coaching staff preferred the 2-1 or 3-2 final scores instead of the 30-goal outburst scored in the last six games. But the Bruins are also showing some impressive versatility ahead of the playoffs in winning the tight one-goal games, and also winning the high-scoring shootout-type games that didn’t always go their way in the past.
Clearly Bruce Cassidy admitted that there are some things to tighten up defensively with the playoffs just a few short weeks away, but it was also refreshing to hear the B’s head coach wasn’t shying away from simply outscoring their opponents at this point in the season.
“I just think, this time of the year, you’re playing teams in different circumstances, so some will get loose, some will be tight. The teams that are loose, our guys feel they can win those games, so it’s hard to go into the room and say, ‘we can’t play that way; we’ve got no chance of winning.’ We just went 8-4, 6-5 and now 7-4, so, as a coach…I pride myself on being honest. I can’t honestly look them in the eyes and say we can’t win these games,” said Cassidy. “I try to encourage them to play the right way and protect the slot. That’s where I thought we broke down, our slot protection. But if we get into these games, we’ve got to be comfortable winning them, just like the 2-1 games. Now, we don’t want it to become a pattern, and we’re going to work hard on that, but it is what it is right now.”
There’s still a possibility that the significant missing bodies might eventually become too much for the Bruins to overcome, and the degree of difficulty goes up even higher in playing 11 of their final 16 games on the road in a tremendously challenging closing stretch to their schedule. But as for right now the Bruins continue to win, win and win some more in a hockey season that’s feeling more charmed by the day.