Let’s start by stating the obvious when it comes to the Boston Bruins.
They aren’t exactly in need of massive improvements or pricey overhauls after stringing together a 31-9-9 record prior to NHL All-Star weekend.
For this hockey club, it’s no longer simply about qualifying for the Stanley Cup playoffs for the eighth straight season, and for the 15th time in the last 17 years dating back to the 2007-08 season when Claude Julien first became the coach in Boston. It’s about what they might be capable of in the postseason while improving on the first-round exit, they suffered at the hands of the Florida Panthers last spring.
“This is the time of year where everything picks up and you start playing for real,” said Brad Marchand at Warrior Ice Arena as B’s practice started getting underway again on Sunday. “It gets harder every few games and teams are kind of starting to figure out playoff spots and all that. It’s the best time of year and I’m really looking forward to getting back at it.
“The goal is to get better every day and win every game. I really don’t know where anybody is in the standings, and it doesn’t matter. It’s not about where you finish as long as you’re in a playoff spot. It’s about playing the right way and building the right kind of games for the playoffs, and the right standard. And that’s every single day. It’s about that next day and next game and how you prepare for that. I don’t even know who we play two days from now.”
So the eye is on the postseason prize for the B’s with 33 games remaining in the regular season and that’s a good thing. But there should also be a few things that the Bruins look to readily improve during the stretch run while passing by the NHL trade deadline approaching in early March, and then readying for postseason hockey in April that’s going to be here sooner than one might think.
Here’s three areas to watch for Boston to fine-tune and focus on with just a few months remaining until the very best time of the year, the Stanley Cup playoffs.
1. Rest the key players down the stretch.
They obviously can’t do this to an extreme given the salary cap, limited NHL roster and the fact that hockey players want to actually play hockey. But this is an area where they could have rested players with more frequency late last season and didn’t while chasing down the NHL regular season record. That ultimately led to Patrice Bergeron, Linus Ullmark and Hampus Lindholm, to name at least three, coming down with late-season injuries that absolutely hampered their effectiveness in the playoffs. From an in-game perspective, it will also behoove them to play the fourth line and third defense pairing a little more generously to reduce ice time for workhorses like David Pastrnak, Charlie Coyle, Brad Marchand, Charlie McAvoy, Lindholm and Pavel Zacha ahead of the postseason.
2. Cut down on all the penalties.
This has been a season-long project, but they continue to sit third worst in the NHL with a net minus-28 for penalties this season behind only dreadful teams in Anaheim and San Jose. They are also third worst in the NHL with 196 minor penalties taken this season, with only the Ducks and the Panthers in the sin bin more than the Black and Gold. Some of it is about chasing the puck more in the first half of the year when they were struggling with consistent puck possession, and some of it might also be about playing more defense while protecting/holding late leads on other teams. But let’s face it. Some of it is about bad judgment and hooking/holding rather than moving your feet, and that’s something the Bruins need to fix ahead of the playoffs. Some of it is also simply about not losing your cool. It’s nice to have a B’s penalty kill that wipes out 82.8 percent of the power plays they face, but it’s asking a lot out of that unit.
3. Let’s get physical.
The Boston Bruins need to play bigger, faster and stronger in order to brace themselves for what’s to come in the postseason. And they will need to do it without the expected thump that Milan Lucic would have provided (with the anticipation Bruins management will try to address that at the trade deadline). Florida pushed Boston around in their postseason series and the B’s didn’t adequately respond with equal or greater pushback when things got nasty in their zone. We’ve seen that as a chronic problem with blown third-period leads for the Bruins this season when the action gets heated late in the game. It’s been better lately, to be sure, and the Bruins deserve some credit for improvement when it comes to answering another team’s expected push. But that needs to continue to be the trend for the B’s over these next few months where third-period leads absolutely must be locked down like they weren’t last postseason.
ONE TMERS
1. Interesting note from Elliotte Friedman that the Boston Bruins might not have ended up with Elias Lindholm because a contract extension wasn’t going to be in the offing for any trade suitor. This past Wednesday, the Calgary Flames traded Lindholm to the Vancouver Canucks in exchange for forward Andrei Kuzmenko, a 2024 first-round pick, prospects Hunter Brzustewicz and Joni Jurmo, as well as a conditional 2024 fourth-round pick. “There was one team that was not willing to make the deal without an extension, and I don’t know this for sure, but to me, that screams Boston. Because Boston has a need for the player,” Friedman said on the latest 32 Thoughts podcast. “They did it with Hampus Lindholm. They like to get guys signed, and the other thing about Boston, one of the things about them this year – and they’re having a really good year – they went all in last year. Sweeney pushed the chips in last year. …you can’t do that every year. You cannot do that every year, and my read of the situation, again, this is my opinion, but I believe it’s an informed opinion because of the way they do business. I would be shocked if that team weren’t Boston without an extension, and if Lindholm hits the market this summer, I think the Bruins are going to be in there.”
2. Count me among the fans of the revamped NHL All-Star skills devised by Connor McDavid and the NHL this weekend. I liked that it was individual players vying for a title that came with a $1 million purse and I enjoyed the one-on-one shootout between elite scorers and franchise goalies that served as the event finale along with the traditional hardest shot and fastest skater. One person that didn’t seem to enjoy it all? Nikita Kucherov. Talk about mailing it in.
Been thinking about Kucherov and his performance all day.
— Adam Reid (@AdamReid_) February 3, 2024
I understand he’s somewhat forced to go. I understand he’ll be suspended or fined or whatever.
But this is a 45 second drill. And it’s about the kids watching at home.
Do better.
pic.twitter.com/Xfjp6ldqfR
3. Speaking of the NHL All-Star game, it was pretty fun to see Justin Bieber out there “fantasy camping” it up in warmup shooting around and skating with the NHL All-Stars. And he didn’t look bad out there at all. Certainly, looks like he’s keeping sharp with some beer league action out in California before he threw on that red polka dot quilt and hung out with Jim Montgomery on the bench.
It is undeniably cool that celebrity captain Justin Bieber got his hockey fanboy on and skated warmups. #NHLAllStar pic.twitter.com/lvszQulhY4
— Greg Wyshynski (@wyshynski) February 3, 2024
4. Tuukka Rask was at practice on Sunday afternoon as the emergency practice goalie for the Bruins with Jeremy Swayman taking his All-Star option after spending the weekend in Toronto. So now we should start a rumor that Tuukka is making an NHL comeback, right? Isn’t that the formula for all the Bruins Insiders out there after Patrice Bergeron decided to start skating on Fridays with Lee Stempniak and a bunch of other retired NHL players living in the area?
5. Huge win for the NHL players, and fans, getting certainty that they will participate in the Winter Olympics in 2026 and 2030. I just hope a 37-year-old Brad Marchand can act as an elder statesman on Team Canada a couple of years from now after missing out on previous chances to represent his country in the Olympics due to a number of different reasons, including the NHL’s reluctance to lend out the players in the last few Winter Games, with the last time due to COVID concerns.
Brad Marchand is very disappointed about the NHL's ruling on the Olympics:
— Conor Ryan (@ConorRyan_93) December 26, 2021
"I know at the end of the day, they don't care about the Olympics, they don't make money on it. And that's ultimately what this is — it's a business. And we're an asset." pic.twitter.com/zuNDTeZZNm