The Winnipeg Jets found out last night that the Boston Bruins are playing their best hockey of the season now right smack dab in the middle of the year.
In a ballyhooed matchup between arguably the best team from each conference, the Bruins never trailed and took a solid 4-1 win over Winnipeg that again included an impressive third-period finish where Boston strongly finished off their opponent.
There’s little doubt the Bruins were still smarting from getting spanked, 5-1, in Winnipeg right before Christmas in one of their low points of the regular season.
"We don’t like losing twice to a team. We don’t like losing twice in a row,” said netminder Jeremy Swayman, who stopped 20-of-21 shots in a win that was quality at both ends of the ice. “As you saw, first to the last whistle [it was] excellent Bruins hockey. Really special stuff that we can build on and looking forward to the next game."
Certainly, it wasn’t the nine-goal outburst that Boston enjoyed over the weekend against the Montreal Canadiens, but it continues a binge of offense that the B’s have been on since the holiday break. It was the first time any team had scored more than three goals against the stingy Jets in 34 games, a streak dating back to the beginning of November in an impressive showing by Connor Hellebuyck and company.
It was also another chapter in Boston’s recent trend of extending teams and putting them away in the third period. In Montreal it was Danton Heinen closing out the Habs with his hat trick, and against Colorado it was the David Pastrnak show putting the game out of reach in the final stanza.
Even on Monday night, Jakub Lauko continued a hot stretch of offensive hockey with a first-period score as he’s reached a higher-level skating in a third-line role with Trent Frederic and Geekie right now. Lauko now has two goals in his last three games after going the first 31 games of this season without even a single lamp-lighter on a fourth line that wasn’t getting much ice time from game to game.
Jakub Lauko, who made his League debut with the @NHLBruins during their record-breaking season in 2022-23, opened the scoring Monday and has earned wins in 44 of his 57 career games. 😳#NHLStats: https://t.co/KqdYnAA3M8 pic.twitter.com/4tHkBlEkZc
— NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) January 23, 2024
This time around it was Jake DeBrusk going shorthanded while teaming with blue-collar scorer Geekie, who set up two of the four goals in the win. Then it was Brad Marchand with the empty netter to commence the celebration at TD Garden for a team that’s won five games in a row overall and is riding a nine-game point streak (6-0-3) that has them sitting pretty with a seven-point lead in both the Atlantic Division and the Eastern Conference.
“We’ve had a lot of games recently where we were scoring goals, but it was nice to have a 2-1 game going into the third and to be able to extend the lead again,” said Jim Montgomery. “I thought we gave up a couple of chances and they pushed, they’re a real good hockey team, but I was glad with the patience we had.”
The Bruins are now 10-1-3 in the 14 games since the three-day holiday break, they’ve scored a whopping 62 goals (4.43 goals per game) and changing up their third and fourth lines has brought balance to their forward group. The puck possession game has also improved for the Black and Gold, and that has allowed the defensemen to join the attack and become a more consistent part of the overall attack for Boston.
The numbers in January back that all up for the Black and Gold. Hampus Lindholm, for instance, is enjoying his best month for the Bruins with eight assists in 11 games along with a plus-9 rating while averaging north of 23 minutes per game. But it’s part of a teamwide improvement in Boston playing in the offensive zone with much more frequency that’s led Boston hitting a higher gear offensively.
Putting up four goals against the NHL’s stingiest defense and a legit Vezina candidate in Hellebuyck is tangible proof that the Bruins are exactly where they need to be right now.
“There’s going to be waves and flows to the season and obviously there was a lot of talk about our team at the beginning of the year,” said DeBrusk. “It was about how we’re going to deal with losing everybody and the adversity, and we had some adversity at the Christmas break. We’ve come back and been pretty solid, I think, overall to be honest with you, but I don’t think that is our limits.
“Nine goals is obviously an anomaly, but I think [this win] more shows our identity and what we can do even in tight games against the best defensive team in the league. Obviously, we played them in Winnipeg, and they embarrassed us, so we wanted to come out and score a couple on them, to be honest with you.”
The lesson to be learned right now for the rest of the NHL is that you might not want to cross the B’s path for at least the next few weeks. The Bruins won’t hit the road again until late February after touring through Ottawa and Philadelphia later this week, and they are amidst a 14-game stretch where they can widen their gap over everybody across the league.
The Bruins are playing their best hockey of the season as a pair of the Western Conference’s best teams have found out over the last week, and it doesn’t look or feel like the run is going to end anytime soon for a rested, healthy and recharged bunch enjoying their friendliest stretch in the NHL regular season schedule right now.