WILMINGTON, Mass. – Absolutely nobody in the Bruins dressing room believes the Black and Gold are truly out of the woods quite yet after a horrendous opening week.
But there was no discounting the uptick in confidence levels from the B’s group that practiced at Ristuccia Arena on Tuesday morning after putting together a couple of very necessary wins on the West Coast. The B’s took advantage of a Colorado Avalanche team that surrendered once they fell down by a couple of goals, and effectively slowed down a skilled, talented Arizona crew to make it two wins in two tries against Western Conference teams.
For a team that was desperately in search of a bright side or two when they left Boston with an 0-3-0 record last week and defensive leaks sprung all over the ice, the Bruins are obviously in a much better spot a week later with the Flyers on tap for Wednesday night. Claude Julien said he spotted some of the current good habits starting to take hold all the way back in last Monday afternoon’s home loss to the Lightning.
But the defense and offense didn’t truly start working together in a winning tandem until the last two games. The Bruins hope they’ve found the formula to success even if their defensive group still needs some help.
“I thought against Tampa we’d started off well and done a lot of good things, but broken down at some times,” said Claude Julien. “When you hold a team like that to 23 shots you’ve got to take the positives out of it, and we did. We just kept building on it, and reaped the benefits from those adjustments on the road.”
Clearly the Bruins needed the actual positive results of a win or two rather than the moral victories of the loss to the Lightning, however. That’s what they got in taking care of business in Colorado and Arizona, now the Bruins get a chance to show whether or not those first three games were more aberrational than indicative of deficiencies on the roster.
“We got the win, so it was nice to finally get the first one. Then I thought we played a really solid 60 minutes [against Arizona], so it was a big two wins for us,” said David Krejci. “The last two games were perfect examples of playing really solid defensive game, and then we were really fast on the offense.
“We’ve played five games with three of them at home, and we’ve lost all of those ones [at home]. So we need to do the same thing at home that we did on the road. I think we’re feeling pretty good about ourselves, and had a good practice [on Tuesday] morning. We should be ready to go.”
Now the Bruins will simply need to focus on the balanced approach that saw them outscore opponents by an 11-5 margin in the last two games rather than the sloppy defensive effort that had opponents outscoring them by a 16-7 margin in the opening three defeats. It may be easier said than done as the competition gets tougher for the Black and Gold, but that’s the road the Bruins have sitting in front of them while in search of more good results.