October 27 was an inflection point for the Boston Bruins. It needed to be. Their 7-2 loss in Ottawa that night was unacceptable. It was their seventh loss in eight games, and the first in which they truly just rolled over and went down without a fight.
The Skate Pod: Have the Bruins finally found their identity?
Just 11 games in, it felt like their season was already on the brink. If they were going to salvage it, the bleeding needed to stop right there.
Well, the Bruins have now won five straight games since that loss. And on Thursday night, they got to face that same Senators team. This time they came away with a gritty 3-2 overtime win, with Charlie McAvoy setting up Pavel Zacha for the winner with just 5.6 seconds left in the extra session.
“We talked about it before the game. We thought this team today was a different team than it was 10 days ago,” said Sean Kuraly, who scored Boston’s second goal of the game. “Which is what you want to be, to continue to get better. We knew we had to continue to get better. We did it out of necessity. And yeah, I think it showed we were better.”
They are better, and there’s a number of reasons for that. But it starts where it always needed to start with this team: defense and goaltending. Through that Oct. 27 game in Ottawa, the Bruins had given up the fourth-most goals (3.82 per game) and fourth-most high-danger chances (13.4 per 60 minutes at 5-on-5) in the NHL. In their five wins since then, they have allowed just 2.20 goals per game and the high-danger chances against have dropped to 9.75 per 60.
Joonas Korpisalo earned his third straight win Thursday and has now stopped 90 of the 97 shots he’s faced (.928 save percentage) during this streak. Jeremy Swayman was very good in the other two wins, stopping 57 of 61 (.934).
The defense in front of them has been way more structured and connected in the defensive zone. The breakdowns and miscommunications and frantic running around that seemed to stem at least in part from learning a new system under Marco Sturm have been largely cleaned up.
“I think it's mostly just sticking to our D-zone structure and realizing we each got a job in the D-zone, and just do your job,” Kuraly said. “I think sometimes you're starting to give up goals and you're starting to think, I need to do more. And I think the message from the coaching staff is, just come back, take a deep breath, do your job. And if there's a breakdown, we can help each other out, but let's not be too quick to want to put out fires or go too far outside of the system. I think that's been the major thing.”
Some personnel changes have helped as well, starting with the return of Hampus Lindholm from a lower-body injury that forced him to miss eight games. It is not a coincidence that his first game back was the first game of this winning streak. It is also not a coincidence that the Bruins are now 7-1-0 with him in the lineup this season.
Other key changes on the back end include putting Nikita Zadorov with Charlie McAvoy on the top pair, healthy-scratching Mason Lohrei, and inserting Jonathan Aspirot on the third pair. McAvoy’s best games of the season have come since Sturm replaced Lohrei with Zadorov as his partner – again, not a coincidence. With his assist on Zacha’s overtime winner Thursday, at the end of a shift that he completely dominated, McAvoy now has six points during this five-game winning streak and is somewhat quietly up to 12 points on the season, which is tied for third among all defensemen.
Aspirot had an ill-advised step-up at the defensive blue line on Ottawa’s first goal Thursday, but has otherwise has been rock solid since making his NHL debut on Oct. 28 in the first game of this winning streak. Previously a career AHLer, the 26-year-old has drawn praise from Sturm for his competitiveness and how quickly he closes on opposing forwards in the D-zone. Aspirot’s play – and really, the play of all six defensemen currently in the lineup – has left Lohrei watching from the press box, just waiting for a chance to get back in.
Andrew Peeke has stepped up since getting his usual partner back in Lindholm. Not exactly an offensive force, he contributed two assists in Thursday’s win, including firing a shot off the post that Morgan Geekie put back for the Bruins’ first goal of the game. This was a gutty performance from Peeke, who briefly left the game after taking a high, hard hit from Tyler Kleven. On his first shift back, while killing a penalty, he blocked a shot with his right hand and was seen shaking it in pain on the bench.
Sturm revealed after the game that Peeke had won the team’s “Grinder Award” for the night. That the team has a Grinder Award is perhaps the clearest indication yet that the Bruins are buying in to the identity they need to have. Sturm could not recall being part of a team that had such an award, which he said was a completely player-driven idea.
“Some teams don't do anything. Some teams just do the best player,” Sturm said. “This is actually the first team I've seen that’s got the Grinder Award. That's actually pretty good. And the best part is, it's come from the players, not from me. Even a guy like Pasta, he said, ‘I want it.’ OK, you gotta work for it then. But it's good. No, it just helps. And guys take a lot of pride in that.”
The Bruins will need to continue to take pride in grinding and defending as a key stretch of divisional games continues with a home-and-home mini-series against the Toronto Maple Leafs up next.