Are they ready to run?
"They're walking!" said Andy Brickley as David Krejci's shootout effort found the back of the goal in Buffalo on Feb. 9.
Brick had been talking for the last few games of the insufferable losing streak about how the Bruins had to crawl before they could walk.
After their turnaround 3-0 win in Montreal on Super Bowl Sunday, they stayed on their feet for that important step forward in the win over the Sabres.
The B's bolted out to a 5-0 lead in Tampa Bay on Thursday night, before some calls described by former NHL players as "invented" and "not even there" helped to reverse the momentum. Boston held on for a 5-4 win in what seemed like a circus atmosphere — but the win still meant two points.
"Catch-up hockey is losing hockey" was one of the first lessons coaching legend Tom McVie taught our friend Brick. Well, if that is true, then the converse also is valid: Front-running hockey is winning hockey.
The Bruins of 2009 (oh, here we go getting misty-eyed again) were ridiculously dominant during the regular season. They trailed only 20.4 percent of the time, and they led an astonishing 44.0 percent of the time. They ran ahead, they showed their swagger, their opponents would stagger, and the spoked B would roll on, stashing another two points in the shed.
Through the middle of this agonizing winter, the team's management has told us to be patient (of course, they didn't mean me, did they?) and to see how the B's would do when they got healthy. That was little balm for Bruins' followers when, with Patrice Bergeron and Marc Savard (and, for a while, Krejci) on the shelf the team flatlined. They lost to Carolina, 5-1! Healthy? Wait? Are you nuts?!
The Bruins were in the nether regions of Taylor Hall contention. Yes, for a moment there, it seemed that the preseason popular choice for a deep Stanley Cup run would be in the hunt (as a bottom-five team) for the overall No. 1 selection in next summer's draft with its own pick.
But then, on Jan. 29 in Buffalo, Bergeron having forced his splintered and splinted thumb back into a hockey glove a few games earlier, Savard came back, bulky knee brace and all.
Some kids hardly use their legs to move at first, dragging themselves across tile floors with the suction-cup-and-pull motions of their hands. Some sit up and scoot, using one leg out in front. Some do the traditional opposite-hand-and-leg four-limbed crawl.
The Bruins stumbled through some of that, with five more losses — three of them in shootouts, one a one-goal regulation loss and the 4-1 face-plant at the feet of a then-otherworldly Washington team. But even before the 3-0 Montreal win, they definitely were making progress.
Since that ignominious moment at the nadir, the 5-1 rout in Raleigh, the 2010 Bruins — in a state of relative good health — have led 45.1 percent of the time. They have trailed just 18.8 percent of the time. Those numbers — over an eight-game span — are virtually identical to the lead-and-trail percentages of 2009. And they coincide exactly with Savard's return.
The Bruins have not trailed for one second in their last five games. They haven't been in front or tied for this kind of a stretch all season.
This team needs to become colder and more ruthless in putting opponents away, to pursue the next goal of a game with a champion's bloodlust. It needs to nurture the creativity Michael Ryder and Blake Wheeler showed on the 3-0 goal in Tampa, the prettiest of the Bruins' season. It needs to integrate its willingness to take the hit with its ability to break down opponents' traps with purpose. It needs to raise its overall game another couple of levels.
But this team is walking, with a renewed hop in its step.
