Boston Bruins: November is not our month against divisional rivals

The Boston Bruins thus far have just one win against a divisional rival this month, with 4 more Atlantic Division match-ups still to come.

Perhaps it was the strength of the start to the Boston Bruins season that put all of our Atlantic Division counterparts on high alert. Though, even with that said, we only took one win in October against them.

Whatever the case is, the Boston Bruins have to start picking up more than singular points against Atlantic Division opposition otherwise it could eventually bite us when it comes to the play-offs next Spring.

In 3 of our Atlantic Division losses this season, we’ve at least taken a point away and we did manage to beat the Toronto Maple Leafs back in October as well as the Ottawa Senators to start the month of November.

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However, since those results, we’ve lost to the Montreal Canadiens, Detroit Red Wings and most recently blew a four-goal second-period lead against the Florida Panthers. All of these fixtures, injuries or not, should have been winnable games.

Looking ahead to the rest of this month, there is plenty of opportunity to reverse this worrying trend – we head to Toronto with them missing one of their key wingers in Mitch Marner and face a Buffalo Sabres team lacking in defensive stability of late.

A back-to-back against Montreal and Ottawa to close the month lends to taking at the very least two points, though even Ottawa are showing not to be push-overs of late.

By the end of November, we’d have knocked over 11 divisional fixtures, December offers up a further 6 – by the close of 2019, you’d hope that we’re looking at a points total from those encounters of at least 16 points – that’s basically winning half of them.

We’re currently on 6 points thus far, so need to start picking up the pace in the final ten Atlantic Division games this calendar year. Otherwise, we need to start being a little worried – the Atlantic Division makes up 35% of all our fixtures in a season. These are games we must take points from, especially given the way play-off spots are shared out.

The talent is there, what with David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand leading the way scoring-wise and, until very recently, Tuukka Rask proving dominant. The Boston Bruins are still sitting top of the tree in the Atlantic Division for now too, let’s not forget.

However, they do need to shake any excuses that injuries are slowing their progress, re-focus and ensure they play full sixty minutes of hockey every night and start tallying more points on the ladder as a result.

Simple sounding, yes. In practice, it’s a bit more difficult. But we have to have faith in the Boston Bruins to start getting it done.