The Bruins’ struggles have made this game a lot more important than it otherwise should be, and so now they face a potentially season-defining game.
Just the Facts
- The Time: 7pm EST
- The Place: Amalie Arena, Tampa, Florida
- Place to Watch: NESN, FanDuel Sports Network-SUN, ESPN+
- Place to Listen: 98.5 The Sports Hub
- An Opposing Viewpoint: Raw Charge
Know Your Enemy
- The Lightning are 21-15-2, which is good for the 1st Wildcard spot in the Eastern Conference, 4th in division, and 44 points in the standings.
- Nikita Kucherov might be a punk-ass, but he’s a damn good punk-ass. He leads the Lightning in points with 56 in 36 games.
- Brayden Point is leading the Lightning in goals with 24 in 34 games. Right behind him is the key acquisition of their offseason; Jake Guentzel, who has 21 in 37 games.
- The Bruins PK will be sorely tested tonight, as the Lightning come into this game the 4th best team in Power Play success in the NHL: with a 26.6%
- It brings me no pleasure to inform you Andrei Vasilevskiy is in fact back. He’s got a .915 SV% on 30 starts, and a 17-12-0 record.
Game Preview
In a market so used to success and also pretty prone to hyperbole when things go wrong; its very easy to look at the next few games and declare them the single most important stretch of the Boston Bruins season.
That said…it’s really, really hard not to feel like that’s the case given the efforts they’ve been turning in lately.
Boston plays three Atlantic Division foes over the next week or so, and it really couldn’t have come at a worse time; While they have improved analytically from where they were, and have gotten decent performances out of Jeremy Swayman, David Pastrnak, and Justin Brazeau, it appears all of Boston’s problems from when Monty was still in town have come roaring back with a vengeance; having gotten badly outscored at just about every strength (including the man-advantage, which is just…blissfully infuriating) and their defense has begun to collapse in on itself. Part of that is catastrophic luck, as their PDO has dipped considerably and some particularly hideous turnovers came at deflating points in the last couple of games, but a lot of their issues are both very familiar and highly frustrating. The team seems to know it, too; with the feeling at practice being that everybody is keenly aware change could be coming if this all goes sideways.
All of this leads directly up to staring down the barrel of giving up their 3rd place spot in the Atlantic to the team they face tonight.
If there’s any consolation for the circumstances the B’s are in right now, it’s that the Lightning are right down there in hell with them.
Part of the reason Boston has been spared from getting dropped into the Wildcard over and over again has been that Ottawa and Tampa decided to go on identical losing streaks that kept giving them ample opportunity to pull away. Of the two, Tampa’s was probably less forgivable; as they faced a fun but still very flawed Montreal, a rebuilding San Jose, and a only slightly better Anaheim; failing summon more than a single goal in each of those games. However, Tampa beat Carolina on Tuesday in a solid 3-2 victory, and that has them a mere point away from pulling even thanks to Boston’s own woes.
Scrounging a point against the Lightning isn’t going to spare this team; Tampa has and has had a better goal differential than the Bruins have had all year and a much better points percentage. If there’s anything the Bruins can exploit, recent games suggest that the Lightning both start and finish games pretty slowly, and if they want to get anywhere on this road trip, starting strong and staying here goes a very long way.
They really, really need to win this. Let’s hope they see this precarious moment in the season for what it is, and seize it.
Let’s see if they can do it.