BOSTON – There are many impressive statistics and gaudy won-loss record when it comes to the Boston Bruins this season.
Break it down any way you want, the Black and Gold are pretty good at everything they do pretty much across the board with 30 games still to go in the regular season. One of the more impressive factoids about the Bruins given their solid league standing is a 4-1-2 record against the current last place teams in each of the four divisions.
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The Bruins have deftly avoided the “trap games” against teams like the Buffalo Sabres and Arizona Coyotes, and they’ll be charged with doing that again on Saturday night when they host Buffalo at TD Garden. Given the 27-4-4 role that the Bruins have been on in their last 35 games, it might be easy to overlook a Sabres team that’s once again the absolute dregs of the Atlantic Division.
But the B’s haven’t done that, and it’s a credit to, among other things, the Black and Gold’s ability to play to a certain standard night in and night out.
“We try to talk about our team every game…every pregame we touch on what the other team does well and what we can do well against,” said Bruce Cassidy. “But then we talk about what we need to do and [Buffalo] will be no different if tomorrow we were playing…let’s say Tampa Bay. Whoever the opponent is we’re trying to focus on our game."
“I don’t know if that’s how we avoid it by not focusing on the other team so much as on our crew. It might have something to do with it, so then maybe the players aren’t looking at it saying ‘We’re going to have an easier time.’ I don’t know if that’s it, or we just have veteran leadership in the room that knows there are no easy games in this league. If you don’t come to play, you’re going to have a tough time. I’m not saying everybody needs their ‘A’ game every night to win, but you can’t have your ‘C’ game every night and expect to be consistent. That’s another thing we talk about, it’s ‘A’ or ‘B’ games.”
Boston Bruins
It’s been pretty much ‘A’ or ‘B’ games every night for the Bruins over the last three months, and that even goes for the NHL’s weak sisters like a Buffalo team that enters Saturday with a pathetic 8-14-6 record on the road this season. It's ultimately another reassuring sign that the B's are locked when they completely stomp bad teams they should be easily taking care of as is the case at home on Saturday.