The Bruins swept their New York road trip when they concluded it with a 3-1 win over the Rangers at Madison Square Garden.
Boston, once again, got help on offense from its defense and saw another outstanding performance from Jeremy Swayman, the latest evidence that the B’s have arguably the best goalie tandem in the NHL.
Here are four takeaways from the win.
Defensive depth could be tested
It’s been a while since the depth on the blue line has had to be tested, but that may be the case for the Bruins after Thursday. Brandon Carlo took a shot off the skate early in the second period. The Bruins ruled him “unlikely to return,” and Carlo missed the remainder of the game. WEEI’s Scott McLaughlin pointed out that Boston has used the same six starting defensemen for 24 consecutive games, which certainly speaks to the B’s ability to stay healthy since Derek Forbort broke his pinkie finger.
“We’re gonna be careful,” head coach Jim Montgomery told reporters after Thursday’s game of Carlo. “We’ve got a real good extra defenseman in (Jakub) Zboril. If he’s not ready to go Sunday, we’ve got the luxury of getting Zboril into games. We’ll see when we get home and we get our doctors on him.”
The Bruins do not practice Friday, so there won’t be any sort of update on Carlo until Saturday. The good news for the Bruins, though, is that Zboril is a capable defenseman. He hasn’t quite picked up where he left off after tearing his ACL last year, but has been able to fill in at times this year.
Patrice Bergeron doesn’t need rest
Maybe he will as the Stanley Cup playoffs inch closer, but Bergeron wasn’t about to sit out of the second game of a back-to-back even after taking a puck to the face Wednesday night. Montgomery told reporters as long as the X-rays came back clean then he’d leave it up to the captain. He not only was in the lineup at puck drop but scored his 17th goal of the season.
“It was more making sure that everything was fine depending on the swelling, how I was gonna feel today,” Bergeron told reporters. “I was hoping that it was gonna stay, I guess, manageable and it did. There’s no issues for me on the ice.”
The Bruins don’t play again until Sunday, so Bergeron will have a chance for some rest before then.
‘Luxury’ Goaltending
Enough cannot be said about how strong the Bruins goalies have been this season. They got another solid performance from Jeremy Swayman on Thursday, saving 31 of 32 shots en route to his 11th win on the year.
“He’s been fantastic and he just keeps getting better and better,” Montgomery told reporters. “What I like was how he was reading everything. He made really hard saves look pretty easy, like the Panarin breakaway. Panarin’s looking to go five-hole and he read it. His puck play was really good too helping us break pucks out.
” … It says a lot about the inner drive in him. He wants to be challenged, he wants to help the Bruins win hockey games. I think the luxury we have with both goalies is both of them have won games for us on the second end of back-to-backs.”
All-Star Pasta
Shortly after the Bruins sealed their fourth straight win, David Pastrnak was named to the NHL All-Star Game by way of the fan vote. He’ll now join Montgomery and Linus Ullmark as the Bruins’ representatives.
“It’s great, obviously, to have another teammate there,” Pastrnak told reporters. “It’s gonna be more special when you have a teammate to share it with.”
This comes as no surprise given Pastrnak leads the team with 35 goals — putting him on pace to reach the 50-goal mark, the first Bruins player to do so since Cam Neely did so in the 1993-94 season.
