Saturday’s loss at the hands of the rebuilding Rangers might have left a sour taste in their mouth, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone on Boston’s roster that was going to bemoan the team’s upcoming schedule — or lack thereof.
As part of their league-mandated bye week, the Bruins will not suit up in another regular-season matchup until Jan. 29 against the Jets — with Boston enjoying the luxury of at least eight straight days without a practice or game.
Aside from David Pastrnak, who will head to the NHL All-Star Game later this weekend, the Bruins won’t have to deal with any hockey-related obligations in the short term. For some players, a vacation is next on the docket. Others, some quality time with family. But for all — some vital rest & recovery during another grueling NHL regular-season campaign.
Still, given the tight race that has been the Eastern Conference standings, the Bruins won’t have much time to ease themselves back into a regular routine. Boston currently sits in third place in the Atlantic with a record of 27-17-5 (59 points), just one point behind second-place Toronto. But the two clubs in Wild-Card positioning, the Canadiens (59 points) and Penguins (58 points), aren’t making things any easier for the Bruins.
Yet, after spending most of the first four months of the regular season monitoring the standings while keeping an often banged-up roster afloat, Bruce Cassidy will be the first to say that both him, his staff and his players have all earned the right to unplug for a couple days.
“I think that gets hard — to say that we need to be in second place or first place or in the playoff mix,” Cassidy said earlier this week of the current standings landscape in the days leading into the break. “Now you're measuring yourself, which you eventually do — where’s everybody else and how we’re playing.
“I woke up this morning and saw seven teams that are within a point of each other after Tampa. … Are we going to be able to compete and catch Toronto at that point, because Tampa looks like it will be a difficult task for anybody, or can we at least maintain where we are and the team gets better and we have. Our January month has been a good month in terms of our points. The games we’ve lost. We’ve been in.”
As a whole, Boston has been solid in 2019 — posting a record of 6-3-1 so far in January before heading into the bye week. But how does a club carry any of that momentum over after having such a long stretch off? For Cassidy, it’s about more than just recharging your batteries and putting your skates back on.
Last season, the Bruins were on a roll going into their week-long break — separating themselves from the pack with a 12-3-2 record since the start of December before going into the bye on Jan. 8, 2018.
Upon their return, the Bruins didn’t lose much of a step — winning 10 of their next 12 games to continue their surge to the top of the Eastern Conference. Was there much rhyme or reason to that sustained stretch of strong play?
Both Cassidy and his skaters harped on how the onus tends to fall on the player to not miss much of a step even with plenty of days lined up away from the rink. Conditioning goes a long way — something that Boston’s staff prides itself in — but for Brad Marchand, it’s all about keeping your compete level high, even though your body might initially say otherwise after some time off.
“You see it at times, maybe in the first week or so when you get back and maybe you're a little rusty,” Marchand said. “But we practice hard and we train hard, so it’s pretty easy to kind of get back — first few days sometimes are a little slow, But as long as you have guys that are putting the work in and are competing, you’ll be ok.”
All things considered, the time off should afford Boston’s injured players — Tuukka Rask (concussion) and Joakim Nordstrom (leg fracture) — an added window to rest up, while veterans such as Patrice Bergeron, Zdeno Chara and David Krejci will be able to keep fresh for the stretch run.
The main concern during these extended stretches of inaction usually revolves around the play of younger skaters — a bit of an issue for a Bruins team currently fielding eight players ages 25 or under.
It can be a two-fold problem for the Bruins when it comes to its youthful core. How exactly will a player in a bit of a rut like Jake DeBrusk (one point in last six games) fare with some time off? Does the rest help said player, or does the added time off just compound the issues for a snakebit skater looking to contribute?
Likewise, how do you keep a player hot as soon as they head out on break? He’s on pace to notch 25 points fewer than he did in his rookie season, but Danton Heinen has reason to be encouraged with his last outing against New York — tallying his first goal since Jan. 8 after fellow youngster Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson won a puck battle along the boards and set him the scoring chance.
JFK with the dish and @DHeinz43 makes no mistake. #NHLBruins pic.twitter.com/JfAO3JxHxU
— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) January 20, 2019