The Boston Bruins haven’t just been losing lately, they’ve been losing ugly.
Whether it was outright bad performances like Saturday against Edmonton, or blown leads marring games like New Year’s Eve against the New Jersey Devils, the Bruins were finding ways to lose in gut-wrenching fashion.
That sent them into Bridgestone Arena on Tuesday with a 4-1-5 record over their last 10 games and losers of their last three. But thanks to a complete performance pretty much wire to wire, the Bruins earned a convincing 6-2 victory over the Nashville Predators, who were under the direction of John Hynes, their head coach of about eight hours.
The Bruins were playing the a style of hockey that’s put them among the Eastern Conference’s elite this season. They controlled the puck well, were efficient in all three zones, and when they broke down defensively Tuukka Rask was there to bail them out.
Some of the success can be attributed to a good meeting a day prior. Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy indicated following the win that he felt the team’s meeting Monday helped them get back to the brand of hockey they needed to be playing.
“I thought we had a good meeting the other day, on Monday,” Cassidy said on NESN’s “Bruins Overtime Live.” Went through some of the stuff we do well that we’d gotten away from: Playing fast through the neutral zone, attacking the blue line with speed and then hanging onto pucks in the offensive zone, funneling a little bit more and having a little more confidence. So it kind of all came together today in certain areas, in those parts of the game. I’d like to see more of it, because I think that’s when we’re at out best.”
Nashville is a team that is both struggling and in transition, and Boston’s schedule now is about to get tougher. Six of its remaining seven games before the All-Star break are against teams in postseason positions.
Here are some other notes from Tuesday’s Bruins-Predators game:
— David Pastrnak extended his point streak to 11 games with a goal just 96 seconds after opening puck drop.
The 23-year-old is on his second double-digit point streak of the season, and the numbers Pastrnak has put up during this current run are as impressive as you’d imagine: Six goals (on 45 shots) with 10 assists.
After a sensational start to the season, Pastrnak came back down to earth for a few weeks. But he’s sufficiently heated back up, which has helped a Boston offense that at time has had its share of struggles.
— Rask’s reliable season continued with a nice performance against Nashville.
Boston’s top netminder stopped 33 of the 35 shots he faced, 15 of them coming in a second period where he faced a firing squad.
— Matt Grzelcyk had his hand in quite a bit of the Bruins’ success Tuesday night. The third-pairing defenseman was a plus-three and contributed a pair of assists in the victory.
Grzelcyk has formed a nice duo on the third pairing with John Moore, and as a result the combo is logging some pretty hefty minutes (16:57 for Moore, 17:33 for Grzelcyk on Tuesday) for a third pairing. That’s a sign of trust from Cassidy in deploying both players, which certainly is a nice luxury for a head coach that has a 42-year-old on his top pairing.
— That 42-year-old is Zdeno Chara, who’s been unafraid to fight this season.
Chara got into his third scrap of the campaign, which came after he took exception to a Yakov Trenin hit on Charlie McAvoy. Chara wrapped up Trenin from behind, and after the forward squared up, the two both landed a good amount of punches.
It was Chara’s third fight of the season, which matches his total from last campaign. If he gets into another bout before season’s end, it’ll be the most he’s fought since the 2011-12 season.
