Boston Bruins: Tied For First In The Atlantic
The Boston Bruins were not expected to make the playoffs this year. Many of the Boston media wrote them off as well. While I had them finishing in sixth in the Eastern Conference, I wasn’t hoping for much more than that. Right now, Claude Julien (with his 389 wins) has surprised us all by helping the Black and Gold get all the way to the top of the Atlantic Division.
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The Boston Bruins played their best defensive game of the season last night. The layers were always there. If there were any defensive slip-ups, Bruins goaltender Jonas Gustavsson was there to make the save. The Tampa Bay Lightning spent the entire sixty minutes of regulation trying to find a hole in the Bruins defenses, only to find nothing.
Overtime was certainly a different story. The trio of Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, and Torey Krug went out on their first shift and set up a bang-bang play that gave Brad Marchand the opportunity to put in the game winner just ten seconds into the 3-0n-3.
“I knew if I got to the net Bergy would find me — and he does all the time,” said Marchand after the game.
“It was a great transition by Torey, and we talked about it before overtime — to try to catch them flat-footed like that,” said Bergeron. “When I got the puck, I knew that Marchy was going to try to beat his guy and be open backdoor, so I was trying to just to lay it there for him.”
It’s been a great run for the Black and Gold since the trade deadline. They won both games in Florida, and have gone 4-0-1 since bringing Lee Stempniak (who was the hero in the OT win over the Panthers) and John-Michael Liles to the Black and Gold. Now with only 14 games left in the regular season, the Bruins would need a Montreal-type of collapse to fall out of playoff contention.
The win against the Tampa Bay Lightning should start to silence some of the B’s harsher critics. This kind of play proves that the Bruins are capable of putting in solid effort against the ‘best’ teams in the NHL. While consistency may be the biggest hurdle the Bruins have to traverse, it’s a positive work in progress over at the TD Garden.
“It’s great to see the results,” said Bergeron about the Bruins recent run. “That’s what you’re playing for, to get the results, and learn from past mistakes and to grow as a team and I think we’ve been doing that.”
“It will never be perfect,” said Head Coach Claude Julien. “You can talk to any coach in this league — it doesn’t matter how many points we get, we always look for our team to be better. So it wasn’t perfect, but I think overall when you manage to get that many points against good teams like that, you’ve got to be happy.”