It might be time to start believing in this Bruins group as a playoff team and to hop on the crowded bandwagon that it’s going to be an entertaining hockey spring in Boston. There is still road to be traveled during the regular season and the Stanley Cup still feels like a realistic goal a year or two down the road for this group, but it’s time for just about everybody to cease the doubting about a Black and Gold crew that refuses to budge or give in regardless of the situation.
The B’s were down 3-0 after a dreadful first period on Sunday night in Columbus, but clawed all the way back and eventually took home an unlikely 4-3 shootout victory at Nationwide Arena.
“It says it all about the team that we have this year,” said Marco Sturm. “Guys chipped in. Guys care for each other. I think our team took over by just playing our game. We needed that little push, and we knew that we needed to be better.
“It was a good learning curve for the boys. Moving forward, you cannot relax in this league. It took a lot of work and a lot of patience, but it is paying off in the end.”
It was a massive two points that pushed the Bruins to a four-point cushion for the top wild-card playoff spot and a six-point margin of error for a spot in the Eastern Conference playoff structure.
The Bruins have now pushed to a 90 percent chance of qualifying for the Stanley Cup playoffs, according to MoneyPuck.com, and have a very good chance to push over 100 points for the year, coming off a miserable, lottery-bound finish last season.
Bruins vs CBJ another big one tonight https://t.co/h4szvdxdJW pic.twitter.com/vZRm9yCd5T
— MoneyPuck.com (@MoneyPuckdotcom) March 29, 2026
The victory was sealed by shootout goals from Fraser Minten and a nasty backhanded, top-shelf game-winner from Viktor Arvidsson, but the really big moment was Pavel Zacha’s game-tying strike with the goalie pulled with 11 seconds remaining in regulation.
VIKTOR ARVIDSSON WINS IT IN THE SHOOTOUT TO COMPLETE THE BRUINS COMEBACK 🚨
— Gino Hard (@GinoHard_) March 30, 2026
IT WAS 3-0 JACKETS TO START THE 3RD 🤯 pic.twitter.com/DW7AVsdjBQ
It was Zacha’s second goal of the game and his 13th goal in 17 games since the Olympic break as a player who is clearly on a mission to help elevate the B’s to a playoff spot after missing his Team Czechia stint due to a concussion.
And Jeremy Swayman got the starting nod in back-to-back games over the weekend and made 21 saves through overtime before once again turning the shootout into his personal playground. There might have been some temptation to pull Swayman after the dreadful first period, but the Bruins netminder continues to be a big-time asset in all of these high-pressure games down the stretch.
“Hey, I’m back in college again, baby…it’s exciting. I thought it was awesome,” said Swayman of the uptick in workload. “Anytime you get asked to put the Spoked B on you don’t say ‘no.’ I think the culture in this room is pretty contagious where everybody has to pull their rope when their name gets called.”
But it was also about a very clear message from the unheralded leaders in the Bruins dressing room that the team wasn’t going to throw in the towel after a really uninspired first period, with some truly disengaged play from Hampus Lindholm contributing to the early hole Boston fell into in the first period.
Tanner Jeannot dropped the gloves with massive Blue Jackets defenseman Erik Gudbranson at the end of the first period in a true NHL heavyweight showdown that seemed to go on forever, and then six seconds later Mark Kastelic stepped up to fight one of the toughest dudes in the NHL, Mathieu Olivier, in a clear message for the rest of the team to wake up and start competing.
Erik Gudbranson vs Tanner Jeannot in the fight of the season. Edge Jeannot #nhlbruins#cbj pic.twitter.com/6At0mmsx9e
— RGF (@rgfray1) March 29, 2026
“We know when we don’t have a good start and we find our way back into games,” said Zacha. “Today I think [Jeannot] and [Kastelic] gave us the pulse that we needed in the second period, and we just kind of stuck with it in the second and third period. We just ultimately found a way.
“If you keep creating chances, eventually it’s going to go in. After those [second period] fights, I think we completely switched as a team. We saw that there were guys willing to fight for each and get the team going. It was great and I was happy they did it.”
The message was received by the rest of the group as the Bruins upped their level of play in the second period and then scored a pair of goals (Charlie McAvoy from the point, Zacha on a redirect) in the third to inch within striking distance of overtime. That turned into a 6-on-4 advantage with Swayman pulled from the net and Zacha scored on a backhanded chip shot over the goalie as he was being hauled down to the ice in front of the net Columbus net.
The comeback and the resilience shouldn’t be surprising at this point as the Bruins have shown those traits all season, but the battles they’re consistently winning against fellow Eastern Conference playoff suitors is proving their postseason worthiness. It’s also turning them into a battle-hardened group that is going to be a handful in the Stanley Cup playoffs after being forced to scratch and claw for their postseason spot.
“Obviously it wasn’t the first period we wanted knowing the stakes of this game, but when we came in [for the second intermission] we felt like we were just a shot away from getting back into this game,” said McAvoy. “It’s the resilience that we’ve tried to embody all year and to see it coming at this time of year in a comeback win like that is huge. You can definitely build off that.
“It will absolutely help us with our confidence. You have to do one of these where you have a game where you’re down 3-0 and come back in order to believe that you can do it. You obviously have to earn that. You are resilient and you have the ‘never say die’ attitude, but now you know you have been there and been able to do it if you get in one of those situations again.”
Nothing has been clinched, obviously, and the Bruins will have many more challenges facing them once they presumably get into the postseason, but they’re showing with each passing big-money game that they are worthy of the same faith that they’re ready for the challenge.