Almost a year after the Bruins fired Claude Julien and made Bruce Cassidy coach, the B’s meet the Canadiens, who hired Julien exactly a week after he was dismissed in Boston, in Montreal on Saturday.
The Bruins weren’t quite themselves when we last saw them on Sunday night, losing a 6-5 overtime decision in Pittsburgh. After a month-long stretch of solid two-way performances, it was a goofy enough outing to become curious about how the B’s would respond.
A five-day bye has killed that curiosity. Nobody will be thinking about what happened last Sunday when the schedule resumes on Saturday.
The Bruins, in fact, have potentially sucked the suspense out of the rest of the season, and they don’t even hit the halfway mark until Saturday. They earned points in 11 straight games (8-0-3) before the bye, meaning it has been almost a month — Dec. 14, to be precise — since they lost a game in regulation. They’re 17-3-3 over the last two months.
Standings-wise, the Bruins are practically locked into spending the remainder of the year fighting to finish in second place in the Atlantic Division. They’re probably too far behind Tampa Bay to challenge for first place, and the B’s and Leafs are so far ahead of what’s beneath them in the Atlantic, one or both would have to tank for months to fall out of the race for second.
So where’s the drama?
Almost a year after the Bruins fired Claude Julien last Feb. 7 and made Bruce Cassidy coach, the B’s finally meet the Canadiens, who hired Julien exactly a week after he was dismissed in Boston, in Montreal on Saturday. The Bruins and Canadiens also play at TD Garden on Wednesday, and again next Saturday in Montreal.
Besides trying to establish a grip on second place in the Atlantic, there is almost nothing tangible at stake for the Bruins in this three-game series. The Habs, who are also coming off their bye week, broke a five-game losing streak with a pair of wins before going on hiatus, but still found themselves sixth in the Atlantic, 13 points behind the B’s, who have played two fewer games.
Through 42 games, no Montreal player has more than 23 points, and the best player on an average-at-best defense corps, Shea Weber, is sidelined by a foot injury. That’s too much pressure for even a goalie like Carey Price to withstand for long.
The Canadiens, in fact, are about a week from facing significant, unpleasant decisions. Like the Bruins, they’re going to give back all the rest they got during their bye by playing five games in eight days. If they’ve fallen further out of the race by then they may make other, major changes.
The Bruins, therefore, have much to say about what the last few months of the Habs’ season will be like. Whether they choose to use that as motivation remains to be seen, and they may not feel that way, anyway: The number of Bruins who were long-serving Julien soldiers isn’t all that high, and many in that pack (Tuukka Rask, Brad Marchand, David Krejci, David Pastrnak, Torey Krug, Kevan Miller, etc.) got successful careers started under Julien. Sure, they love how things have gone under Cassidy, but there aren’t many axes to grind against Julien, either.
The Bruins’ focus is more likely to be on re-establishing the type of play that made them the hottest team in the Eastern Conference before they were forced to take a break.
— Mike Loftus writes for the Patriot Ledger of GateHouse Media.