Boston Bruins Had a Roaring Good January.
The Boston Bruins knew they needed to have a strong January to help preserve their standings in the playoff hunt. Thankfully, the Black and Gold came through. The Bruins went 8-1-3 to start 2015. The nineteen points the Bruins earned this month has brought them to the top wild card slot in the East. Their hard work has helped them drag themselves from outside of the playoff picture. They’re now in sixth place in the Eastern Conference.
Live Feed
Puck Prose
The key to their recent success is that the Big, Bad Bruins re-discovered their identity. (It had been sorely missed in 2014.) The Bruins have finally come around to playing their brand of physical, two-way hockey. Save for the sole loss against the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Bruins have been competitive in every game this month.
The Bruins two-way, defensive minded hockey isn’t the only thing going for the Bruins right now. Tuukka Rask has done a rather solid job in net for Boston. His current save percentage is an impressive .922. (He’s only one one-hundredth of a point outside the top ten for goaltenders now.) Last year’s Vezina winner is playing for keeps, and it will certainly propel the Black and Gold forward into the final few months of the season.
More from Bruins News
- Bruins release Prospects Challenge roster, schedule Tuesday
- Bruins bringing back familiar forward on tryout contract
- The Bruins should take a look at these four free agents
- NHL Network lists Ullmark as sixth-best goalie in the league
- The Lasting Legacy of David Krejci
“He definitely was our best player in January.” said Milan Lucic of Rask’s recent play. “Last game, and here tonight, he definitely stepped his game up to the level that he’s capable of playing at. So he’s a huge part of our team — probably the most important part of our team, with his ability and his competitiveness. We’re grateful to have a guy like that between the pipes.”
It’s a good thing to see the Bruins concentrating on their style of play, and allowing that confidence to spread out amongst the entire squad.
“I think that what’s given us success in this month is that we’re focusing on our game more than the other team’s game,” said Lucic (who certainly has reclaimed his identity in the last thirty days). “All in all, I think the focus is on what we need to do, in our game and our system, in order to get success. You stick to your game plan and you play your game plan the way it should be played, it’ll give you success.”
The Bruins now have seven players scoring in double digits. Brad Marchand leads the team with fifteen. Patrice Bergeron is the overall point leader with thirty-three. The Bruins now have two players with thirty plus points (Bergeron and Carl Soderberg). The B’s have eight other players with at least twenty. While the B’s aren’t known for individual efforts, they’ve always played to the strength of the pack, and that reflects in the equal scoring among the B’s top players.
The Bruins will move forward in February with the same intensity that has helped them close the gap in the East. The team knows they’ll have to keep up the intensity and fix the holes in their game.
“There’s areas in our game that we need to build on,” said Bruins forward Chris Kelly. “If you look at the teams in front of us, they keep winning, so we have no choice but to continue to play well and try to get points to try to catch them, or at least keep up with them. Every point is big for us. I know it’s the end of January; it’s not really been like that in the past, when you’re looking at the standings where every point is huge. But we kind of put ourselves in that situation early on in the season.
“It’s good to see us battling to get points.”