BOSTON — The Bruins had their 10-game win streak snapped with a shootout loss to Detroit on Friday, but get a chance to start a new streak right away with Winnipeg in town on Saturday.
Despite coming up on the short end of the shootout decision on Friday, Bruins coach Claude Julien is looking for his club to put together a similar effort and hopes that the end of the streak won't
"I think it's to be able to duplicate the effort we had [Friday]," Julien said of his goals for Saturday. "I thought our effort was pretty good. It's a matter of carrying that into our next game. We all know how these streaks sometimes end and it kind of deflates the bubble and we don't want that to be the case for our team. We just want to keep plugging along here. Like I said, we won some games along the streak that maybe we didn't quite deserve and we lost one [Friday] that probably deserved better fate so it balances out. We just got to stay focused and bounce back."
The Jets are on a bit of a roll themselves with a 4-0-1 run in their last five games. But Winnipeg is also playing its third game in the last four days and is under no illusions about the challenges of facing the reigning Cup champs.
"It's important for us to wrap our heads around what we're going to be facing tonight," Jets coach Claude Noel said. "This is a well-coached, well-managed team. You don't win the Stanley Cup by accident. They defend very well. We're going to have to fight for every inch of ice in this game. If we don't put our hardhats on, it's going to be a challenge. We know what we have to do. We've been playing pretty well. It's going to require 20 players really playing hard for each other, which is what we've been doing and why we've been successful of late."
The Jets could get defenseman Ron Hainsey back for this game. He returned from missing 16 games due to injury on Wednesday, but suffered another lower-body injury against Washington that night and missed Friday's win at Carolina.
"He feels a lot better today," Noel said. "So we're going to see how he's doing this morning and we hope that he's going to be in the game tonight. We don't know. It will be a game-time decision on him."
Chris Mason got the win in net on Friday, stopping 20 of the 21 shots he faced from the Hurricanes as Ondrej Pavelec got a rare night off after playing in each of the previous 13 games. Pavelec (7-7-4, 3.21 GAA, .898 save percentage) is likely to return to the pipes for this contest.
Tim Thomas was the first Bruins goalie off the ice at the morning skate and is expected to get the start after Tuukka Rask played Friday. Thomas is 10-4-0 with a 1.85 GAA and .936 save percentage and has won each of his last seven starts.
Gord Dwyer and Chris Rooney will be the referees, with Derek Amell and Tony Sericolo working the lines.
Projected Bruins lines
Forwards
Milan Lucic-David Krejci-Nathan Horton
Brad Marchand-Patrice Bergeron-Tyler Seguin
Benoit Pouliot-Chris Kelly-Rich Peverley
Daniel Paille-Gregory Campbell-Shawn Thornton
Defense
Zdeno Chara-Johnny Boychuk
Dennis Seidenberg-Joe Corvo
Andrew Ference-Adam McQuaid
Goalies
Tim Thomas
Tuukka Rask
Scratches: Jordan Caron, Steven Kampfer
Projected Jets lines
Forwards
Andrew Ladd-Nik Antropov-Kyle Wellwood
Evander Kane-Bryan Little-Blake Wheeler
Tanner Glass-Jim Slater-Alexander Burmistrov
Chris Thorburn-Tim Stapleton-Eric Fehr
Defense
Dustin Byfuglien-Mark Stuart
Zach Bogosian-Johnny Oduya
Arturs Kulda-Mark Flood
Goalies
Ondrej Pavelec
Chris Mason
Scratches: Jason Jaffray, Ron Hainsey (lower body)
