It wasn’t a blowout victory or a massive, undeniable statement that things have completely reversed course, but Thursday night’s win over an admittedly mediocre Utah Hockey Club was a positive first step for a Boston Bruins team looking to dig themselves out a pit right now.
After a 20-game stretch to start the season where the Black and Gold were playing well below their potential in just about every conceivable category, they simply played good, solid, invested hockey in a 1-0 win over the Utah Hockey Club at TD Garden. The special teams won the game as Elias Lindholm scored a power play goal in the second period and Joonas Korpisalo continued to enjoy a strong season with a 21-save shutout as he’s pushing for a bigger role in the Bruins goaltending tandem right now.
But the most important thing is that there was a discernible change in the way the Bruins played in terms of energy, connected play and every player looking like they were invested in the overall process. After weeks where there would be anywhere from 6-10 Bruins players without a shot on net, the Bruins fired 31 shots on net in controlling the play and only three Bruins players went without a shot on net.
There weren’t any passengers on the Black and Gold, and that’s an encouraging sign for the first game with Medford native Joe Sacco at the helm as the new interim head coach replacing Jim Montgomery.
“[It felt] pretty good, I’m not going to lie to you, obviously,” said Sacco of getting his first win in the NHL as a head coach in over 10 years after four years previously guiding the Colorado Avalanche. “To get our guys to get a win, too, was even more important. We feel better about ourselves, and I think how we went about the game tonight was like a business-like approach. I thought that we had a couple of individuals that really brought the energy to our group tonight to lift the bench at certain moments during the game.
“Just a good effort all-around from our guys. They really dug in. We were looking for the passion and the emotion and we got it.”
Here's to many more. pic.twitter.com/fW9E6nbrlj
— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) November 22, 2024
It all goes back to the way Bruins management wants to see Boston right the ship after sleepwalking through the first 20 games with half-hearted defensive efforts and some of the worst special teams play in recent franchise history. Don Sweeney outlined it in announcing the coaching change earlier this week, and it sounded like it was much more about mindset and effort than it was about any X’s and O’s coming from the coach.
“When you're underperforming, and your players are not feeling good about themselves, it’s probably going to exacerbate those trouble issues [with your team]. People start to say ‘Okay, do you have enough skill to be able to do that? Do you have enough speed to be able to do that?’ These are the things you have to be able to shift,” said Don Sweeney. “Change is inevitable in the league. You’re going to have turnover and you have to be able to adapt, both from a coaching perspective and from a player perspective. It doesn’t mean your fundamentals have to go away, and that’s where I get back to a bit of the structure in playing without the puck that’s been problematic to a degree as well.
“We’ve given up way too many high dangers in situations we just haven’t [in the past], and that’s the part I want to get back to. Whether or not we can play a little more north-south and direct and get it a little more volume-oriented [with shots on net] and score the greasy part of it. Yeah, I think that we probably have to get back to a little more simplistic approach because we haven't been able to execute a system that was pretty damn successful. Now, again, it could be more player driven. The hockey sense level of Patrice Bergeron isn’t going to be replicated. These guys are more than capable of playing, executing and performing, and that's what we want to find out. We want to find out what this team is capable of based on where we’re at right now. With 60 games to go, there’s a lot of season [left].”
Certainly, it looked more like the structured, defensively responsible Bruins on Thursday night in terms of details and habits with Lindholm scoring a greasy PP rebound goal off a David Pastrnak shot from the dot, an important moment for both him and the team amidst early season struggles.
“It’s been a tough couple games, or a stretch here, for me,” admitted Lindholm, who scored his third goal in 21 games this season. “Obviously, I haven’t played good enough, and yeah, hopefully that can help a little bit and get some confidence.”
But there was more going on with Boston holding down the Utah team offensively while playing with defensive layers in front of Korpisalo. And Mark Kastelic providing the energy and emotion with a pair of fights against Robert Bortuzzo, including a second one where the Bruins forward admitted there was a little bit of “rage” involved with a series of right-handed punches that dropped the tough Utah defenseman.
Holy moly Mark Kastelic 😳💪 pic.twitter.com/hvIXUDAscK
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) November 22, 2024
The Bruins had talked about the onus of more players dragging everybody into the fight, and Kastelic was the embodiment of that with five hits, two fights and a ton of energy in Thursday night’s win.
“Guys like Kastelic, you never truly understand how valuable they are,” said Brad Marchand. “They have the ability to change the course of a game with a shift.”
Kastelic’s fight immediately after the Bruins scored a power-play goal was one of those kinds of shifts as it sent a message to Utah that it was going to be a tough night’s work for them against Boston. That is the “hard out” mentality that both Sweeney and Sacco felt was missing from the Bruins for the entirety of this season, but it unquestionably returned in the first game after Montgomery’s firing.
There will be lingering questions as to how and why the Bruins players flipped the switch under Sacco after languishing for weeks under Montgomery, but some of them will probably never be fully answered.
“I think it’s a good confidence thing,” said Marchand. “Knowing that, you know, we can play the right way and it is in here, and we can respond. You still hate the situation that had to arise for us to respond that way. It was a good game tonight, but it’s one game.”
The Bruins got the initial bounce they were looking for after shaking things up with the coaching change, but now the challenge becomes sustaining it rather than sinking into any bad habits formed during the two-month malaise Boston was in to start this season.