After sweeping a five-game homestand, the Boston Bruins will look to continue their recent winning ways when they hit the road to clash with the Original Six rival Chicago Blackhawks for the second time this season on Saturday night.
A 4-2 Thursday win over the Seattle Kraken wrapped up the perfect home stretch for Boston, which hits the road for back-to-back games with possession of one of the two Eastern Conference wild-card playoff spots.
Though their goal total was boosted by a 10-2 win over the New York Rangers last Saturday, the Bruins outscored opponents 22-5 during the homestand and scored third-period goals in three of those five games.
“I think we’ve been very steady actually,” Boston coach Marco Sturm said. “If you look at our third periods now, all five games at home, they’ve probably been one of the better ones. I think that’s the biggest reason (for the successful run). Just to be more consistent, stay calm and play better defensively. And obviously, our goalies were excellent.”
The Bruins avenged their lone regulation loss in the last nine games (7-1-1) with Thursday’s victory against Seattle, fueling off the pregame excitement of former captain and Hall of Fame defenseman Zdeno Chara’s No. 33 jersey retirement.
Mark Kastelic scored the eventual game-winning goal while short-handed in the second period against the Kraken. Marat Khusnutdinov, Viktor Arvidsson and David Pastrnak also lit the lamp to help Jeremy Swayman (26 saves) earn his third straight win.
Defenseman Nikita Zadorov agreed with his coach’s sentiment about the strength of the team’s game — and providing that type of effort in honor of one of the strongest players in the history of the sport.
“You can see the success when everybody’s buying in for 60 minutes and we know what we’re doing on the ice. It’s exciting,” Zadorov said. “It was a big night (Thursday). It was probably one of the biggest games of the year and it’s great to get a win for Big Z for sure.”
The Bruins expect that defenseman Andrew Peeke will be able to travel with the team after leaving Thursday’s game in the first period with a lower-body injury.
Chicago is coming off a 3-1 Thursday loss to the Calgary Flames, marking its third straight home defeat and third in the past four games overall to drop six points below the playoff cut line in the Western Conference.
“It’s a long season, there’s a lot of games, so things happen,” Blackhawks defenseman Connor Murphy said. “But it’s frustrating just because we feel like we’ve been home for a bit now and we don’t have an excuse (for) being fatigued or being disconnected in any way.”
Former Bruin and current Blackhawks captain Nick Foligno scored Chicago’s only goal, while Spencer Knight made 20 saves.
The Blackhawks were in the low-event game all the way through, scoring 2:38 in and trailing 2-1 from the 6:05 mark of the first period until an empty-net goal iced the game for Calgary with 1:01 remaining.
The biggest decider against the Blackhawks was that their special-teams units both surrendered goals while going 0-for-4 on power plays. Calgary tied the game on its man advantage and took the lead while short-handed. Chicago’s penalty kill is the NHL’s second-best (85%), but allowed a goal for the first time in 17 opportunities.
“I would say we’ve done a pretty good job of either winning games or putting ourselves in a really good position on special teams over the course of the season, and (Thursday) we were minus-2 in special teams,” Blackhawks coach Jeff Blashill said. “It’s hard to win games in this league without a great amount of firepower when you lose that special teams battle like that.”
Saturday marks the third of a four-game homestand for Chicago.
–Field Level Media
