If the Boston Bruins can find a way to bottle what they had Tuesday night on Long Island, there very well might be another championship parade through The Hub in three short months.
The B’s put forth what can only be described as a dominant effort Tuesday night, pasting the New York Islanders 5-0 in Uniondale, N.Y., and setting the tone for a crucial four-game, late-season road trip.
It’s not that the Bruins need to be too worried about the standings down the stretch. Barring a meltdown of historic proportions, Boston will make the playoffs and almost certainly play the Toronto Maple Leafs in the first round. The Black and Gold owns a fairly comfortable six-point lead over Toronto with nine games left for each club, so the Bruins should be able to hold on to home-ice advantage.
Tuesday’s game was the clearest sign yet of the Bruins’ obvious championship potential. It was perhaps the best game they have played under head coach Bruce Cassidy. In a way, they borrowed tenants and hallmarks from the Cassidy era, skating circles around the Islanders while also creating offensive chances with a quick-strike attack out of their own zone. But the Bruins also kind of resembled the Claude Julien era clubs with a suffocating defense in which everyone was strict with their responsibilities, limiting the Isles to a season-low 13 shots.
“In terms of the possession, the worry meter for the coach, you see what’s happening before maybe the bad comes and you start to sense ‘Uh-oh,’ but we never really got away from it,” Cassidy told reporters after the game. “I think in the third there were a couple of plays we were a little soft through the neutral zone and they knocked down. But other than that, that was for a shift or two, and our guys right away sort of said, ‘Hey, let’s get back to crisp, hard plays.’ It was good.”
When the only areas a coach can nitpick are “a couple of plays” in the third period of what was then a three-goal game, you know you had yourself a night.
The level of play showcased by the Bruins on Tuesday is likely unsustainable — for any team. However, it’s a timely reminder of what the club is capable of doing as winter gives way to spring. It also comes at a time when the Bruins are starting to get healthy. David Pastrnak returned Tuesday, and more reinforcements are on the way, with Marcus Johansson, Kevan Miller and Torey Krug presumably nearing their own returns.
If and when the Bruins are back to full strength, they’ll have depth matched by only a few teams. Even against the Islanders, that was on display with scoring from all four lines, including three goals from the bottom six forwards.
Getting by Toronto will be difficult, and the Tampa Bay Lightning still are the NHL’s best team. But with the B’s showcasing the closest thing to hockey perfection against a first-place team, they have set the standard and expectations even just a little bit higher based on the level they’re capable of reaching.
