BOSTON — The Bruins are boringly good right now.
That’s no slight to the B’s, who won their seventh straight with a 2-1 victory over the Phoenix Coyotes on Thursday night TD Garden. In fact, it’s a compliment, as the Bruins are in the midst of one of their most dominant stretches in recent memory.
Maybe boring isn’t quite the right word. Perhaps predictable better suits this Bruins team, a club that you expect to win every time they step on the ice right now. There’s really no drama; you just know they’re going to find a way to win.
The seven-game winning streak marks the club’s longest since Dec. 2011, and they have put themselves in a spot where they can essentially put in on cruise control the rest of the way and into the playoffs.
The Bruins, especially under head coach Claude Julien, have been remarkably consistent, and that’s what we’re seeing right now. They’re finding different ways to win every night, and that’s in large part because they’re putting the emphasis on the process, not the product. When you do that, more often than not, you end up getting results.
“I see commitment from everybody,” Julien said. “It’s pretty obvious when you play the number of games that you’ve played, and you look at the way you’ve played, there’s a pretty good commitment right now from our guys. … It’s not so much the streak, it’s the consistency. The consistency leads into that streak that you’re seeing,”
One night after getting a big win over rival Montreal, the Bruins were probably ripe for the picking. Yet they were able to come out with a good start — Zdeno Chara scored just 5:54 into the first period — and squash any of the Coyotes’ hopes to catch the Bruins napping after Wednesday night’s game against the Canadiens.
“To be honest, not a lot of guys even brought up last night after,” Jarome Iginla said. “We just  — today, looked forward. But I guess looking back yeah, big emotional, a rival game when it goes well you don’t have a letdown. But it was business tonight and trying to keep the good feeling going and keep the good habits.”
Thursday’s defensive effort was especially impressive, particularly through the first two periods. The Bruins limited Phoenix to just eight shots in the first period and only two in the second. That second period, in which the Bruins only put three shots of their own on net, certainly wasn’t the most exciting period in hockey history.
“You look at that, and I’m sure it’s not too, too exciting for the crowd, but at the same time, you’ve gotta win a hockey game,” Julien said. “At the end of the night, the fans leave here pretty happy when you win, so that’s the main thing.”
Using that line of thinking, Bruins fans are especially happy right now with their team being one of the hottest in the league right now. The scary thing, however, may be that they haven’t even reached their full potential, at least not yet.
“I don’t think we are playing the best hockey yet,” Chara said. “We can always improve. For sure there are areas that we need to improve, but we are just finding a way to win hockey games right now so that’s a big difference.”
