By the end of the evening, it was the Flames who were feeling sick.
The Bruins erased any fears of looking past this game to Saturday’s highly-anticipated matchup with the Canucks by scoring 1:14 into play when Marchand’s linemates, Tyler Seguin and Patrice Bergeron, and his replacement, Benoit Pouliot, combined for the first goal of the game.
It was far from the last, as Boston exploded for eight more goals in a 9-0 whitewash of Calgary. It was the Bruins’ league-best 26th win of the season, 23 of which have come in the last 27 games as the Bruins have been rolling since the start of November. But even with the success they’ve had of late, Thursday’s offensive outburst shocked even the Bruins. Boston last scored nine goals in a game in 1998 and posted its last 9-0 victory in 1987, before five members of the current roster were even born.
“It pretty fun to watch, fun to be a part of,” Pouliot said. “I didn’t expect that at all, scoring like we’ve been scoring all year. Our plus differential is pretty high and it’s good, but our goalies are the main thing keeping us in the game. We backed them up, keeping the momentum on our side and scoring goals and playing pretty well.”
The Bruins have now scored exactly twice as many goals (138) as they have allowed (69) this season. That’s a plus-69 goal differential, 29 better than the second-best team in that category (Detroit at plus-40).
On Thursday, it reached a point that was almost embarrassing.
“I’m not going to stand here and say I like scoring the number of goals we did tonight,” Bruins coach Claude Julien said. “We know how frustrating is to be on the other side of that, but at the same time you can’t tell your team to stop playing. We want to create good habits. I told our team especially in the third period to go out and play hard, keep your shifts short and be smart out there.”
The Bruins have had nothing but good habits since Saturday’s wake-up call in Dallas, when some undisciplined play proved costly in a rare 4-2 loss to the Stars. They followed that by giving up the first goal in New Jersey on Wednesday, but have scored 15 unanswered since with all four lines contributing.
“I think it’s confidence honestly,” Bergeron said. “I think the depth we’ve been talking about all year has been helping us a lot, but four lines feeling confident, feeling good about themselves obviously helps a lot. And every line wants to contribute and go out there and find ways to score.”
The Bruins’ depth was never more evident than with Marchand out of the lineup. He was tied for the team lead in goals with 15 before the night, but the offense didn’t miss a beat with its sparkplug sidelined. Pouliot slid into that spot seamlessly, finishing the night by tying a career-high with three assists and adding four shots and a plus-3. Seguin (1-2-3, plus-3) and Bergeron (2-1-3, plus-3) fared fine without Marchand as well, combining for nine points on the night.
“Well it says that we’ve got depth and we back each other up when we’re missing one of our best players,” Pouliot said. “Some guys needed to step up, and obviously props to our goalies. Our goalies have been playing awesome all year long and we just keep scoring goals and sometimes 6-0 after the second but we still need to push hard and we don’t want to stop scoring.”
Tuukka Rask made 25 saves for his third shutout of the season and third in his last four starts. He’s allowed just one goal in his last 276 minutes, eight seconds.
Rask took a back seat to the offense in this one though, though he did feel some sympathy for his Calgary counterparts in net Leland Irving(6 goals on 21 shots) and Miikka Kiprusoff (3 goals on 21 shots).
“I kind of felt for the other goalie who was playing there,” Rask said. “But it’s good to see we’re scoring goals. That hasn’t always been the case for us and hopefully we can keep that up throughout the season, but it got a little out of hand today.”
There won’t be any such sympathy on display Saturday when the Bruins and Canucks meet for the first time since their contentious seven-game Stanley Cup Final.
“It’s going to be a huge game,” Bergeron said. “I mean obviously it’s a tough team. We’ve seen it last year, it’s a team that’s very physical, a lot of talent, great power play and now we know them more than we used to last year. And it’s going to be a tough battle and I know it’s going to be an exciting game and we’re all looking forward to it.”
The Bruins are eager to face Vancouver again, but they also made it clear that Saturday’s outcome won’t change anything that happened last spring.
“The Stanley Cup Finals were last year, not this year,” Julien said. “We won. It’s not like we have to prove anything. We just have to go out and play hard like we do every night and try and win that game. I don’t think the outcome of Saturday is going to change anything in our life.”
Have questions for Douglas Flynn’s mailbag? Send them to him via Twitter @douglasflynn or send it here. He will pick a few questions to answer every week.
