The Boston Bruins have won their last six home games as a result of their, 3-2, shootout victory against the Vegas Golden Knights on Monday.
They’ll go for lucky number seven on Sunday against the Florida Panthers after a brief road trip through Pittsburgh Thursday night.
In the meantime, Matthew Poitras was back in the lineup on the fourth line in place of Sean Kuraly in the win against Vegas. Jonathan Aspirot remained alongside Mason Lohrei from Saturday’s overtime win against the Chicago Blackhawks to Monday night’s battle with the Golden Knights.
Other than wondering “so when does Frédéric Brunet get back into this lineup?” I have no major complaints about anything.
Poitras looked like his usual self before getting absolutely clobbered and bloodied with an elbow (he returned to the night’s action with a fishbowl, fear not) and Aspirot looked a bit more comfortable in his second-straight game.
Looking comfortable is fine and all, but being effective is another matter and that’s where Brunet is more likely to pull ahead whenever Marco Sturm decides to re-insert the 23-year-old defender.
James Hagens extended his point streak to three games with a goal to open the scoring. He now has 6-6–12 totals in 16 games this season– good enough for the second-most goals on the roster and third-most points behind David Pastrňák (eight goals, 20 points) and Elias Lindholm (13 points), respectively.
Once again, however, we’re left wondering what kind of an impact Hagens might have late in the game or in overtime as he didn’t see much ice time as regulation was coming to a close.
Mark Stone scored a power-play goal for Vegas and– stop me if you’ve heard this before– the Bruins’ penalty kill gave up Stone’s goal just eight seconds into the special teams action.
At the very least, it was the only time the Golden Knights converted on the power play.
Morgan Geekie had a power-play goal of his own prior to Stone’s goal and now has a goal in back-to-back games.
Oh and Jeremy Swayman looked great in the shootout on route to securing the win, his eighth quality start in 12 starts and a 2.31 goals-against average and a .913 save percentage on the season.
Boston outshot Vegas, 27-23, and held their weight against one of the expected top teams in the league coming into the season. The Bruins are now 11-4-1 overall and still in command of the Atlantic Division with 23 points to Montréal’s 20.
We’ll see how the B’s handle their momentum with only two games in the next nine days before things resume a somewhat routine flow for the rest of November.
Now for the positives:
You wouldn’t be able to tell from the scoresheet, but Hampus Lindholm looked involved and very in-tune with whatever was going on– whether it was in his own zone or while creating rush opportunities through the neutral zone.
Maybe it’s a glimpse of his former self returning to form after all the injuries he’s battled in the last couple of seasons. Definitely something to keep an eye on as the other Lindholm (Elias Lindholm) has his own renaissance.
The two Lindholms crashed the net and nearly ended the game in overtime as it was.
The Bruins play 11 games this month. Two of them are road games.
If they continue to be as dominant and/or as resilient as they’ve been on home ice, they could really stockpile a ton of points by American Thanksgiving.
Personally, I am always a fan of teams making their home ice a living hell for their opponents. I’m also a fan of teams getting as many points as possible before the December and January slog of the schedule takes hold.
Alright, that’s about it for this one.
Some nights are just a grind and could’ve gone one way or another, but you’re happy to get two points and focus on riding the momentum of the win into the next game where you aim to clean things up a bit.
I’ll have more takeaways as the week unfolds, I’m sure, but for now I should get back to rating Hometown Remix jerseys and figuring out some points models entering the month of November. Enjoy the ride.
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