BRIGHTON, Mass – The Bruins went into their three-game miniseries against the Tampa Bay Lightning and Toronto Maple Leafs viewing the stretch as “a measuring stick” for the B’s after an opening six-game stretch to start the season that wasn’t very challenging.
Sure, the Golden Knights and the Avalanche are pretty good teams out West, but the Black and Gold will face bigger challenges getting out of their own divisional bracket in the playoffs with the Bolts and Leafs running neck and neck with Boston.
So, what is there to make of the Bruins after watching them take four out of a possible six points when they ended the three-game divisional stretch with a 4-2 win over the Maple Leafs on Tuesday night at TD Garden?
There’s every reason to believe this team is going to be every bit as good as last year’s team was in the regular season, if not even better this time around.
Think about it. The Bruins aren’t playing close to their best hockey, they were missing their No. 2 center for all three games (in fairness, so was Toronto with John Tavares out as well) and they still came within a shootout loss and an overtime defeat of taking all six points from the Lightning and Leafs. They had to settle for four out of six points, but they head into a three-day break from games feeling pretty good about themselves while sitting second in the Atlantic Division with games in hand against the teams (Buffalo in first place and Toronto in third) on either side of them in the standings.
“Those three games I thought our offense came around a lot better in terms of shot generation and chance generation, second chance generation and second-chance effort on pucks. I thought that part was good,” said Bruce Cassidy. “We weren’t generating as much earlier in the year. We competed well and we were in every game. We won one of them, unfortunately, but I thought we could have won all three. I didn’t feel like we were on the wrong end of any of those three games in terms of the play.
Boston Bruins
“You feel about that and they’re probably measuring themselves against us as well. So I think it’s a bit of a three-headed thing going on from the last couple of years. But now all of a sudden if you look at our division you’ve got Buffalo in the mix, Florida is starting to play well and Montreal. We’re measuring ourselves against these teams that we’ve seen in the past, but we’re also in the present now. Our next challenge will be to see what Buffalo is all about, and Florida, in our division.”
The good news is that the trends are beginning to change for the better after the B’s basically rode Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron and David Pastrnak along with the top power-play unit for the first two weeks of the season. Brett Ritchie has played back-to-back quality games against Toronto, Jake DeBrusk and Par Lindholm scored their first goals and Charlie McAvoy is showing signs that he’s coming out of a sluggish offense start to the year as well.
Combine all that with David Pastrnak leading the NHL with 10 goals in nine games, the Bruins leading the NHL with a power play that’s scoring a ridiculous 35.7 percent of the time and a goalie tandem (Tuukka Rask and Jaroslav Halak) second in the league with a .935 save percentage, and it’s clear the Bruins have all the ingredients to again stand as one of the best teams in the NHL.
That much was clear as things unfolded against Tampa and Toronto the past week.
Certainly, there is still a ways to go for the Bruins, but they needed a strong start given what might be waiting for them in the dog days of February and March once a “Stanley Cup Final hangover” takes hold.
That strong start (6-1-2) has become a reality through the first nine games. Perhaps the best news of all is that they still aren’t anywhere close to playing at peak capacity
“I’d go as far as to say we haven’t played really good. I think we’ve kind of been…just kind of been a straight line, really. We’ve dipped and we’ve gone above, but we’ve consistently played good [hockey] and we want to be better than that,” said McAvoy. “I know personally I want to be better than that and I think as a team we’ve talked and we have a feeling in this locker room that we’d like to grow our game exponentially. We’d like to do that.
“Every day we’re looking at the right stuff, looking at good video of what we need to work and what we need to get better. Every day is a new day.”
The Bruins still have one more measuring stick game waiting for them Saturday when they host St. Louis in a rematch of the Stanley Cup Final. That one should bring even more emotional resonance than the divisional showdowns. But the B’s enter it knowing they’re a little more battle-tested after getting through Tampa and Toronto and a little more confident knowing their game is in a good place at this early stage of the season.
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