The Rebirth of the Boston Bruins

Three games with a new coach, three wins. Who is the man who gave Boston a new life? That man is Bruce Cassidy. After two solid performances and two wins with the new interim head coach, one with our backup goalie may i add, which never happens, the Bruins faced Montreal sunday night and played some of the best hockey they’ve played all season. They won 4-0 at TD Garden which moves them to second place tied with the Ottawa Senators for second place in the Atlantic Division, with five more games played than Ottawa.

The Bruins won this game by playing physical, scoring first and early, keeping pressure on the Habs, and strong defense and goaltending.  The game started off with Tuukka Rask making a huge glove save to stop a good scoring opportunity. He continued the night with recording a 25 save game; the 6th shutout of the season for his 27th win of the season. Rask was 6-15-3 coming into this game against the Habs with a 2.61 goals against average as well as a .912 save percentage in those 25 games. Tonights win is huge for Rask, it is nice to see a performance from him against a team he has been so bad against in the past. Rask was able to perform this well because the Bruins defense actually played well. They were not only blocking shots and making good defensive plays, they were jumping into the offense with both Chara and McQuaid scoring goals tonight as well as Krug recording an assist.

The offense played great tonight as well, with Krejci getting a powerplay goal and an assist and Vatrano scoring a goal to put the dagger in Montreal’s heart. Cehlarik, only playing his second game with the B’s, recorded an assist to McQuaid for his first career NHL point. The Bruins goals were all very nice goals as well; that’s the only real way to score when you’re playing the best goalie in the NHL, Carey Price. Krejci’s 14th goal of the season was a tic-tac-toe goal on the power play from Backes and Cehlarik, which resulted in Cehlarik recording his second career point.

The best part about this game, is we got a glimpse of the past with some “Big Bad Bruins” hockey. 58 seconds into the game Krug and Shaw dropped the gloves. It was in response to Krugs hit on Shaw earlier this season giving him a concussion and keeping him out for a short amount of time. David Backes laid our Radulov and the hits and the chippy battles were constant throughout the entire game. Kevin Miller eventually fought Michael McCarron in the third period. It’s just so refreshing to see this Bruins team revived and playing some old school Bruins hockey.

The three game win streak puts the Bruins at 29-23-6 and drops Montreal to 31-19-8. The Bruins will go into a bye week happy with the way they have played and hopefully it will turn their season around to a strong push to the playoffs. They begin a four-game road trip next Sunday on the West Coast against the Sharks at 8:30 ET.

Written by Chase Barnhart