Boston Bruins: An important weekend ahead.
The Boston Bruins have certainly had an up and down season. They’ve found themselves in and out of the playoff race. The Black and Gold would have a strong month, followed by a lackluster one. Every time the B’s seem to get themselves out of the hole, they would dig themselves a new one.
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“I think at the start of the year we were making mistakes, but it ended up in the back of our net, and the layers weren’t there,” said Chris Kelly of the Bruins season to date. “It’s a game of mistakes. I don’t think anyone plays a perfect sixty minutes, and is satisfied with the entire game. There are still areas that every team wants to get better. I think that the layers are there when you make those mistakes, but that they’re not so costly and so glaring.
“It’s been a full team effort on any given night where someone’s coming up big for us, and playing well and contributing. Everyone’s pulling their weight. You know we try to have twenty leaders out there, and I think we’re doing that right now. [Nobody is] wanting to be that weak link, and every line is playing well, and doing what they need to do.”
The Bruins seemed to have gotten back on track after a rough February and are attempting to climb up the ladder in the playoff race. This weekend will prove pivotal for the Bruins as they jockey for position coming into the home stretch.
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With their 3-2 shootout win over the Tampa Bay Lightning, they pull within two points of the Washington Capitals for the top wild card slot in the East. They’re only five points behind the Detroit Red Wings for an automatic spot in the postseason. The Bruins have been surging as of late becoming one of the hotter teams in the NHL in the home stretch this season. If the Bruins can maintain this momentum, a sixth seed is very possible for the Black and Gold.
“We’re definitely going in the right direction. It’s been going like that, I don’t know, three weeks maybe, playing good hockey, and obviously you can’t play great all the time. But when we have bad periods and stuff like that, we seem to bounce back and find our game during the intermissions,” said Tuukka Rask after the win over Tampa Bay. “It’s been good. We’ve been getting wins and points, so we’re headed in the right direction, but still we can’t afford to take any games off.
“We know that we can play against everybody in this league, and we’ve shown that in the past. Maybe we just haven’t gotten the wins necessarily, but we’ve played some good hockey games against some good teams. [The shootout win over Tampa Bay] was a good example of that.”
The Bruins will need to play to their strengths. They’ve shown that they can contain players like Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin. If the Bruins are able to give that sixty minute effort today and tomorrow they will have done more than cement their place in they playoffs. They’ll send a message that they’re ready to take on all comers in the playoffs.