Bruins Showing Guts In One-Goal Games, Helping To Change Team's DNA
By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- Over the course of the previous two seasons, the Boston Bruins had displayed a knack for regularly coming up short.
It was a problem -- missing out on points in the standings that they should have been picking up -- that really stood out at the ends of both seasons. They went 3-8-1 to end last year's campaign, including a no-show in game No. 82, when a win would have secured a postseason berth. It was a repeat, really, of the year before, when they closed the year on a 5-5-4 stretch to fall out of the postseason picture.
That became the lasting image of the Bruins over the past two years, and a change was very clearly needed. Though GM Don Sweeney was somewhat restricted in how creative he could get, he did what he could. He said farewell to Loui Eriksson and Dennis Seidenberg, and welcomed in David Backes, Tim Schaller, Dominic Moore and Riley Nash. He also put a lot of stock in younger, less-experienced players like Brandon Carlo and Colin Miller.
And through the first third of the season, the ever-so-slight roster tweaks have seemingly worked to change the team's DNA.
Of course, the ultimate measure of that change will come in April. But for now, the Bruins occupy the third spot in the Atlantic Division, ahead of Florida and Tampa Bay -- playoff teams from a year ago.
The most recent evidence of the renewed spirit came Monday night at the TD Garden. The Bruins let a 1-0 lead slip. Then they lost a 2-1 lead. And with just 90 seconds left in the third, their 3-2 lead became a three-all tie. It was a game where two points clearly were not going to come easy. But they remained unfazed, not allowing a Florida shot on goal for the remainder of regulation or the minute-plus of overtime before David Pastrnak turned Michael Matheson inside-out before undressing Roberto Luongo for the game-winner.
"You just come here, and you don't try to put [on] a show," Tuukka Rask said of the Bruins getting back to basics in their own building. "You go to work, and you play your game, and a lot of times they've been tough games and tight games, like today. Nothing came easy but we stuck with it, and got the reward at the end."
The Bruins are not a modest 5-3-0 at home this year, though it's a step forward from their 1-3-0 start to the year. And with goals from Jaromir Jagr in the second period and Alexander Barkov and Jason Demers in the third period on Monday, the Bruins managed to keep that home record above .500.
"Making sure you don't get frustrated, making sure that you stay strong mentally and getting ready for the next shift," captain Zdeno Chara, playing in his first game back after missing six games due to injury, said of the mind-set following up the three game-tying goals scored by Florida. "That next shift has to be a strong shift and making sure that you start all over again. They showed some resiliency, but so did we. ... We stuck with our game and when we went to the overtime, great individual efforts by guys on the ice and the goal was just pure skill of David showing what he can do."
Monday's victory stood out because this year, it doesn't stand out. Battling for and coming away with points has become the norm, going all the way back to the season opener. That night in Columbus, the Blue Jackets took a 2-0 lead into the first intermission. Pastrnak and Backes combined to score three goals in the second, and Brad Marchand broke a 3-3 tie in the third before adding an insurance goal before Pastrnak's empty-netter.
Three games later against New Jersey, the Devils held a 1-0 lead midway through the final period. That's when Marchand struck with the game-tying goal, and the Bruins didn't settle for overtime. Patrice Bergeron netted the game-winner with 75 seconds remaining in his first game of the year.
Just last week in Philadelphia, the Bruins looked lifeless through two periods, and they had a 2-0 deficit to show for it. Yet they hit the ice inspired in the third, and David Krejci and Marchand scored just 78 seconds apart to even the score. Though they eventually lost in a nine-round shootout, they earned a point in the standings in a game they probably wouldn't have in the previous two seasons.
And they carried it over, too. Their next time out following the Philly game, last Thursday at home against Carolina, they trailed 1-0 in the final minutes of the third. Backes' dirty work in front of the net allowed for a rebound of a Torey Krug shot to turn into the game-tying goal.
The Bruins would go 2-for-3 in the shootout, Anton Khudobin picked up his first win of the year, and the Bruins had stolen two points from a game in which they never held a lead.
It's becoming a trend, one that can't happen by accident, and one that's getting noticed more and more as the points continue to pile up.
"I was very proud," Chara said of watching the team go 3-2-1 in his absence. "It was exciting to see how they battled and it's never easy. Every game is a challenge and every game is a big game. There's never an easy game, but guys were battling. They were playing some hard opponents and they won some really big games by gutsy efforts."
Of course, it's not all just guts. The occasional goal certainly goes a long way toward winning games, and Pastrnak (15), Marchand (7) and Backes (7) have led the way in that regard. Add in sublime goaltending from Rask -- who leads the NHL with 14 wins and ranks fourth in save percentage and second in GAA -- and the recipe is there to win some games.
But the Bruins teams of the previous two seasons won games, too -- 41 in 2014-15, and 42 last year, to be exact. What ultimately sunk them was the way they too often let points slip away, either by blowing third-period leads (something that previously was as rare as a unicorn sighting under Claude Julien) or by coming up short in their comeback efforts. That showed in their .452 winning percentage in one-goal games in 2014-15, a mark that got worse last year at .441.
This year, they've upped their winning percentage in one-goal games to .667, winning eight of their 12 one-goal games.
Again, it's early. But if there's any reason to believe that this year's team is destined for more than what we've seen over the past two years, you can find it right there in those one-goal games.
You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.