Seven straight wins would feel good no matter how they came or whom they came against. But having wins six and seven come against a division rival that’s supposed to be better than you? That might feel a little extra special.
The Skate Pod: Pastrnak scores 400th goal, Bruins beat Leafs again
The Boston Bruins faced the Toronto Maple Leafs for the second time in four days Tuesday night. And for the second time in four days, they beat them 5-3.
This isn’t how this was supposed to be going. The Leafs were the team in win-now, buying mode. That’s why they went out and got Brandon Carlo from the Bruins in March in exchange for Fraser Minten, a first-round pick and a fourth-round pick – a trade that is already looking like a decisive win for Boston. They were considered a playoff lock entering this season, and possibly a Stanley Cup contender.
The Bruins were the sellers. They were retooling, and possibly full-on rebuilding if things didn’t start to turn around. Few outside their locker room believed they could be a playoff team this season.
You wouldn’t know any of that based on the last four days, though. These were not lucky wins for the Bruins. They looked like the flat-out better team. They won more battles. They were more physical, led by Nikita Zadorov and his clean hits that knocked Scott Laughton out of Saturday’s game and Auston Matthews out of Tuesday’s.
The Bruins outscored the Leafs 6-2 at 5-on-5. They lost the special teams battle on Saturday, but won it on Tuesday by going 3-for-6 on the power play. In both games, Jeremy Swayman outplayed Anthony Stolarz, who did not go the distance either night – because of performance on Saturday, because of injury on Tuesday.
Boston’s top six was better in both games, despite being down two pieces in Elias Lindholm and Casey Mittelstadt. On Tuesday, that included a masterful three-point performance from David Pastrnak, who became the sixth Bruin ever to score 400 goals with the team.
And just to really pour some salt in the wound, a pair of former Leafs helped the Bruins pile on. Minten, now a full-time NHLer for the first time in Boston, scored the ever-important insurance goal in the third period on Saturday. And Alex Steeves, a top AHL scorer for Toronto who got minimal looks in the NHL, scored his first goal as a Bruin on Tuesday, shaking off John Tavares, one of the Leafs’ best players, along the way.
“It was huge. Huge,” Sturm said of these two wins. “Playing a Toronto team, Hockey Night in Canada, in Toronto, Hall of Fame weekend, not having our full lineup, coming back here. Can we do it again? So, there’s a lot of things going on in those two games. I'm really proud of my guys, just the way they handled things, how they played, structure, details, stick with it. So, winning back-to-back games against Toronto, that's pretty cool.”
Now at 11-7-0 on the season, the Bruins are tied for first in the Atlantic Division in points (22) and are second in points percentage (.611), behind only the Montreal Canadiens (who they will see Saturday night at the Bell Centre, by the way). The Leafs, meanwhile, have now lost three straight and have dropped to seventh in the division at 8-8-1 (17 points).
Maybe it’s still too early to completely flip any preseason predictions about either of these teams, but these last two games – and the Bruins’ seven-game winning streak in general – might at least be forcing us all to reconsider some things.