Bruins’ Mindset For Game 6 Vs. Islanders? ‘We’re Fighting For Our Lives’

It’s do or die time for the Boston Bruins.

Boston’s season is on the line Wednesday when they face the New York Islanders in Game 6 of their second-round Stanley Cup Playoff series. The Bruins trail the best-of-seven set 3-2.

The Bruins have a veteran core that has been in these situations plenty of times.

“Obviously, we know that we’re fighting for our lives, and that’s really the message,” Bruins winger Brad Marchand said Wednesday over Zoom. “We can’t look to do more than our jobs. As long as we come and compete and take care of our job, then hopefully it goes our way.

“When you’re fighting for your lives, you don’t have any excuses,” he later noted. “You can’t have a bad game, and hopefully we get some bounces. I think we’re all excited for the challenge and the opportunity. We’re still here, we’re still fighting for our lives. There’s seven games for a reason, you’ve got to get that fourth game. Obviously, they have a lot of experience in that room, they’ve been through it before, they know how tough it is to get that fourth one, but they’ve done it. They’re going to bring their best tonight and we’ve got to be prepared for it.”

Judging by the messaging coming from the Bruins dressing room this morning, it sounds like they’re just trying to keep things simple.

“The biggest thing is not overthinking it,” Marchand added. “It’s one game, you can’t think about everything else that comes with it. It’s one game, we’ve prepared for this a million times and we all know what we have to do to get ready to play our best. That’s all we can do is leave our best effort on the ice and whatever happens happens. But when we come prepared to play we’re a good team and we’re going to give ourselves a chance. Again, there’s just so many different factors that goes into a team winning that you can’t control, so hopefully they all go our way tonight.”

Puck drop for Bruins-Islanders Game 6 is set for 7:30 p.m. ET. NESN+ will carry an hour of pregame and postgame coverage, and NESN.com will have intermission reports.