BOSTON — The Bruins finally took the sports car out of the garage for their preseason finale on Saturday afternoon, and boy did it look impressive.
Bruins wingers David Pastrnak and Jake DeBrusk became the first pair of Bruins with hat tricks in the same game since the 1960’s and Boston blew the doors off a glorified AHL Blackhawks team, 8-2, that traveled to Boston in the final weekend of training camp. The Bruins got some power play work for their top unit in the first period en route to a couple of power play goals, nearly every healthy B’s regular — aside from David Krejci and Joakim Nordstrom — got into some preseason action and the team looked physically and mentally ready to start the regular season on Thursday night.
That’s really the name of the game in the preseason for a group coming off a run to the Stanley Cup Final that should be a well-oiled machine once the real bullets start flying.
“Physically, I believe we are [ready],” said Bruce Cassidy, when asked if the Bruins are ready to go for the regular season on Thursday. “Obviously [David Krejci] is a part of that. I’ve said I believe he’ll be ready [for opening night], but that’ll be up to him.
“I’ve been told that he should be ready to go. Mentally, I don’t have any doubt that we’ll be ready to play. We’ve had too many veteran guys that are just hockey guys and they like playing. So, we’ll be ready to go in that part. Are we good enough? That you never know until the puck drops at the start of the year.”
Certainly things can change once the regular season gets going as they found out when they were pounded by the Washington Capitals on opening night in DC last season. But for all of the bitterness and heartbreak that Bruins fans are still harboring about the way things ended in Game 7 of the Cup Final last spring, Saturday afternoon was a reminder that this Bruins team is a pretty awesome offensive force that blow most NHL teams cleanly out of the water with their top line and their top five-man power play unit.
After a training camp where all of the drama was sucked out of it once Charlie McAvoy and Brandon Carlo signed following the opening weekend of practices, this Bruins showed on Saturday afternoon they are ready to go for the real thing just a few days from now.
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