Last month, the Bruins lost a pair of home games against the Oilers and Flames by a combined score of 9-3. They got no secondary scoring. Their goaltending wasn’t very good. They made far too many mistakes defensively.
They looked like a team that couldn’t really compete against the best teams in the NHL, and that remained true over the next few weeks. Going into Thursday night, Boston was 2-6-1 against teams currently in playoff position.
Over the last three nights, the Bruins have doubled that win total, flipping the tables on the province of Alberta with a pair of impressive road wins. After beating Edmonton 3-2 on Thursday, they downed Calgary 4-2 on Saturday.
Unlike the Bruins of a month ago, these Bruins now look capable of beating good teams. They’re now getting great goaltending. They’re now finishing some chances and getting some secondary scoring.
It does need to be noted that the Bruins seem to have caught the Oilers and Flames at a good time on this trip, as both were riding three-game losing streaks going into their meetings with Boston. That shouldn’t take away from what the Bruins accomplished.
This could have been a disastrous road trip given the way it started, with a lackluster 2-1 shootout loss to the Canucks. Instead, it turned into arguably their brightest moment of the season thus far.
"Credit to our group in the third period for responding the way they did the last two games and sticking to it and playing the way that they want to play," assistant coach Joe Sacco said. "It was a successful road trip. Five out of six points. It wasn't an easy trip for us, especially the travel and the back-to-back that we had, so we're real proud of our players as a staff and what they did on this trip."
The list of positive developments has to start with Linus Ullmark. Simply put, he was excellent in these two games, stopping 81 of the 85 shots he faced. He was calm under pressure and consistently square to shots. According to Evolving-Hockey, he saved 4.19 goals above expected over these two games.
For a player some had already written off as a free-agent bust, this was huge. And Ullmark’s turnaround hasn’t been contained to just these two games. He’s now 4-1-0 with a .941 save percentage over his last five starts. His partner, Jeremy Swayman, has a .942 save percentage in his last five games. Ullmark and Swayman are now up to .921 and .922 save percentages on the season, respectively. The Bruins will take that all day -- and season -- long.
"Another solid outing again here tonight for us," Sacco said. "Came up big, especially in the first two periods when we were, at times, hemmed in our end zone a little bit too much. He made the quality saves when we needed them. Goaltending's been good lately, given us a chance to win."
At the other end of the ice, the Bruins broke through with four even-strength goals Saturday, finding some 5-on-5 offense that has been missing far too often this season.
The big guns did their part. On Boston’s second goal of the night, a Patrice Bergeron steal in the defensive zone set up a rush the other way that ended with Brad Marchand tipping in a David Pastrnak shot. The top line set up another goal on their very next shift, this one finished off by Charlie McAvoy.
There were also crucial depth contributions, though, especially from the fourth line of Anton Blidh, Trent Frederic and Curtis Lazar. Blidh and Frederic combined to set up Connor Clifton for the first goal of the game. Then that line all but put the game to bed by making it 4-1 early in the third, with all three of them going to work down low and banging away in front of the net before Lazar ultimately finished off a fourth opportunity.
In Thursday’s win over the Oilers, others got involved in the secondary scoring. Taylor Hall set up Jake DeBrusk for a power-play goal, and Craig Smith set up Matt Grzelcyk for what proved to be the game-winner.
These two wins obviously don’t mean all of the Bruins’ problems are solved. But they do show that they’ve made some real progress, and they offer reason to believe that they can beat playoff teams not just be a playoff team. (By the way, the Bruins are now in a playoff position on points for the first time this season, although it’s worth noting that they’ve been in on points percentage -- which is the better metric to use -- for a while now.)
Heck, these last two games might even quiet some of the silly “trade Patrice Bergeron” talk for a little bit.
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