The Bruins have had a historic 2022-23 NHL season and have a chance to meet and break more records before the regular season comes to an end.
Boston is two wins away from tying the 2018-19 Tampa Bay Lightning and 1995-96 Detroit Red Wings’ 62 wins and seven points away from tying the Montreal Canadiens’ 132 points they set back during the 1976-77 campaign.
With five games left, the 60-win Bruins certainly can accomplish more history, and even though they already locked up the Presidents’ Trophy, they’re not going to take the final stretch of games lightly. In fact, Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery sees this as an opportunity to help prepare for what hopefully will be a lengthy Stanley Cup run.
“We have five games left and how we can prepare mentally in these last five games is we can be a historic team as far as number of wins and points,” Montgomery told 92.9 The Ticket’s “Morning Roast” on Tuesday. “Now that it’s right in front of us, setting those records isn’t the most important thing. How it helps us is it sets the right mentality of getting ready for the playoffs.
“So these last five games because of the historic season is actually gonna prepare us for the playoffs which is the most important thing, right? We want win our last game of the year. And being able to get in a little bit of a playoff frame of mind before going into it instead of just riding out the regular season. The fact that we’re chasing records actually puts more importance and gives us something to mentally prepare for.”
Montgomery has had quite a successful rookie season as the head coach of the B’s, and he has plenty of reason to be confident they’ll close out the season on a high note and be prepared for the “two-month grind” that is the playoffs.
“What gives me confidence is how we’ve been connected and how hard the guys have been playing for each other since the first game of the year. Then you couple that with the depth we have,” Montgomery told 92.9. “And lastly, we’ve won every kind of game. We can win 2-1, we can win 1-0, we can win 6-5. We can win when we have a lead and you can be up on us 4-2, 5-2 we can come back and win. … We can play any style of game, but the most important thing is the consistency with how we’ve played. We can find our game within a game, we get to Bruins hockey and once we get there, it’s hard to contain us.”
Opponents know all too well that it can get difficult to contain the Bruins once they’ve found their stride, and they’re not even 100% healthy yet, which makes them an even bigger threat as the Stanley Cup playoffs approach later this month.
Until then, the Bruins will continue to try to chip away at history when they return to action Thursday night against the Toronto Maple Leafs for a 7 p.m. ET puck drop from TD Garden.
