It’s Game Day vs TampaBay.

Claude Julien’s voice earlier this afternoon, when he made that announcement. The Bench Boss also that announced that Daniel Paille would be playing tonight.

“I haven’t had a chance to really talk to our trainer on everything,  I know McQuaid and Bergeron are possibilities, but not certainties.” said Julien,  “Again we’re going to dress 13 forwards and seven D (in warmups) and make sure that everything’s okay for tonight.”

“We’ll know more later and probably know even better after warm-ups.”

 We all know that Patrice Bergeron is the strong silent type; the B’s alternate captain would rather do his “discussing” on the ice. And He wants off that day to day list ASAP.

“We did some X-rays and they were negative so everything’s good,” Patrice said yesterday, “I want to get out there so we’ll try in the morning and see how it fells. “But I’m hopeful – I hope I’ll be ready.”

 When asked about Marty Turco suiting up to return to the net, Julien responded,
“I think so, it’s time for him to come in here and help us out, that’s why we brought him in, to help him out and he has to step up tonight and help us win a hockey game here.”

Everyone is feeling it. The Playoff crunch. We require a sense of urgency in our game.

“Not panic, but urgency and try and get some wins here,” said Julien. “That’s what you got to do through injuries, and even sometimes guys are banged up, but every team is going through the same thing.

“We have to make sure we’re ready to play hard and win ourselves some games here because we want to at least remain where we are right now.”

“Once we get over this hump and start finishing a little better and we get hopefully our team back to a healthy squad, you hope everything else will pay off at that point.”

“Right now we have to keep working through it,” added Julien.

Working through it means to keep driving forward, and shows that while the B’s are still ahead Ottawa continues to be chomping at the bit right on their heels; trailing by only two points.

 David Krejci Showed just that driving attitude in Sunday’s game when he netted a pair of goals to get his team on the board in an attempt to rectify the deficit against the Penguins. The B’s still came up short.  Tonight  against the Tampa Bay Lightning (31-30-7), there is no more room for that.

“You got to go out there (tonight) and play as hard as we can and play to win,” Krejci said. “With a little luck, you never know what’s going to happen.

“You got to think about your job, what you have to do on the ice and that’s all you can control,” Krejci said. “It’s a tough situation when you see one of your teammates go down and leave the bench, but you got to battle through it. We were down last game, but I thought we were working hard and wanted to come back. We came up short, but it happens.”

With the injured list growing every game is it Lady Luck turning against our Boys or a sign of extreme overall team exhaustion in a club coming into the end of the season?

According to Krejci, it’s neither.

“It’s not bad luck,” Krejci said. “Sometimes you pay the price to help your team win the game, and things happen.”

“It’s a really exciting time right now – every game is really important. We play it just like a playoff game, so it should be fun.”

If the Bruins (40-25-3) don’t get past the Lightning tonight, the Senators can tie for the Northeast division lead with a win over the Montreal Canadiens tomorrow. Every point counts. Every game matters.

“Right now everybody is looking at the standings and we know what’s going on – we know Ottawa’s right behind us,” Krejci said. “So, we got to start winning some games – we have no time to be worrying. Just win some games and keep our opposition in the standings.”

Game On.