With point streak over, Bruins need a response game

Elite players and teams know how to respond after a loss. It's a quality of a Stanley Cup champion. Even though the Bruins saw their 18-game point streak come to an end against the Anaheim Ducks on Tuesday night at TD Garden, a true evaluation of Boston's team will come in its next game.

Sure, the streak and the 14-0-4 record in that span was impressive, and unless the team implodes, it should earn a postseason berth in the Stanley Cup playoffs. The one thing we've learned about the Bruins after 48 games is they're resilient. They have a willingness to win. With a healthy and complete lineup, they're a dangerous team, one opponents believe is for real.

During the streak the Bruins were receiving contributions throughout the lineup, which is another sign of a playoff contender. Defense was solid and the goaltending tandem of Tuukka Rask and Anton Khudobin has been working as expected.

Ok, enough about the streak. It means nothing moving forward.



"We'll have to start a new one now," said Bruce Cassidy.

A bounce-back game is exactly what the Bruins need when they host the St. Louis Blues on Thursday at TD Garden. Despite a terrible first period against the Ducks, Boston did respond with a solid effort in the final 40 minutes, which should carry over. It also helped that captain Zdeno Chara stepped up and started throwing punches in the waning minutes against Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf. Chara has done that many times in the past, including once earlier this season against the Columbus Blue Jackets. His message was received loud and clear then by his teammates and that should be the case again this time.

"We’ve got to look at the next game," Chara said. "We can’t be looking back. We’ve got to be ahead and that’s very important for us. This part of the season everybody’s really playing desperate hockey. They’re chasing every point for either a better position into the playoffs or trying to get to the playoffs and we’ve got to realize that every team we’re going to play, they’re going to fight for their lives. We’ve got to match that intensity – the emotional part of the game – and make sure that we are ready to play from the first puck drop and not waiting for the other team to set in play and then we respond. We’ve just got to be more engaged right from the start."

After Tuesday's regulation loss, the Bruins remain in second place in the Atlantic Division with 66 points and trail the league-leading Tampa Bay Lightning by only five points. Now that all the in-season breaks -- Christmas, bye week and All-Star -- are complete, Boston schedule is arduous down the stretch. It begins on Thursday.

It's an important game for many reasons. It will test the Bruins' will and determination. They will be without Brad Marchand, who has served two of his five-game suspension. Rookie defenseman Charlie McAvoy remains sidelined after a heart procedure on Jan. 22 (he's been skating on his own and is scheduled to be re-evaluated later this week.) And, rookie forward Anders Bjork suffered an upper-body injury during the first period on Tuesday and will "miss some time," according to Cassidy.

Even though it's a small sample size, the Bruins are a different team without two of its top players. The adversity the team dealt with earlier this season no doubt made it better and helped produce the recent point streak. The Bruins will need to dig deep once again until Marchand, McAvoy and Noel Acciari (lower body) are able to return to the lineup.

"It was something special," said Patrice Bergeron of the team's recent streak. "I think it’s been a lot of fun and we got to keep that going. It’s one game and we got to realize the one of the things we did in that streak was to stay focused and keep pushing each other and be our best every night, and go back to that."

This Bruins teams is similar in many ways to the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016. After that team's 48th game of the season, Pittsburgh was 24-17-7 and finished the remainder of the regulation season without ever suffering back-to-back losses. In fact, the Penguins only lost consecutive games once during the playoffs to the Lightning in the Eastern Conference finals, but Pittsburgh responded and eventually won the Stanley Cup.

Right now, the Bruins are 29-11-8. They haven't lost back-to-back games since Nov. 11-15. It's imperative for the team's success that it stays that way.

To a man, the Bruins aren't concerned with the point streak ending, which is a good sign. They understand what's at stake and even though it may sound like a cliche, it really is about the next game and starting strong.

"It’s just been showing up every day and it’s been a lot of fun winning games and getting points every single night," said defenseman Torey Krug. "That’s going to be our mentality going forward."

It has to be or everything this team has accomplished the last two months will all go for naught.