Boston Bruins: Staying Sharp On The Road
The Boston Bruins are getting ready to finish up their road trip this weekend as they play the Nashville Predators on Thursday and the Dallas Stars on Saturday. So far, the Bruins have been 3-1 on this road trip, and their efforts have put them into second place in the Atlantic Division.
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“I think we have to be happy with how we’ve been playing so far, but we have two really hard teams in front of us,” said Bruins leading goal scorer Brad Marchand. His next goal will be his 29th, his personal best for a NHL season. “So we have to make sure we bring our best effort so far of the whole trip [on Thursday], and really focus on playing a good game, and then we’ll go from there.”
Two players were absent from the practices today. Patrice Bergeron and Zdeno Chara weren’t on the ice, but Bruins Head Coach Claude Julien told the fans that there was no reason to worry. Bergeron was asked to sit by the staff, and so took a maintenance day. Julien said that Bergeron would be good to go for tomorrow night’s match in Nashville. When it came to Chara, Julien wanted the Bruins captain to take an afternoon off and recover from the work he’s been putting in the last few games.
“Zdeno, for me,” said Julien. “It’s just — he’s the one that’s played the most minutes. I asked him to stay off. As you know, he would’ve been here, but I feel that with games every second night — we just finished four in six — and he’s always at 24, 25 minutes, so I thought it would benefit him and our team by staying off.”
If only we could get Julien to think that way about Kevan Miller though…
The Bruins have had a pretty serious road stretch here, playing six games in 11 days. Other than the loss to the Red Wings, the Bruins have played mostly consistent games, and have been rewarded with six out of eight points so far. For the Bruins, it’s playing one game at a time, and concentrating at the task at hand.
“I think we’ve done a pretty good job of staying focused,” said Julien. “We had a plan before we left to have a successful road trip. We’ve got to stick with that. Right now, we shouldn’t be satisfied; we need better, and we want to be better, and we want to have a better record by the end of it.”
“So I don’t think there’s any satisfaction. Again, believe it or not, as long as we’ve been gone, it hasn’t felt that way because we’ve been busy with teams and this is just another city to try and get two points out of, and then we’ll move on. So it’s been actually a pretty decent road trip so far.”