B’s hope to keep good times going
After winning in Bruce Cassidy’s debut as their interim coach on Thursday, the Bruins have a chance to go into their six-day break next week on a three-game home winning streak.
The Bruins play a home backto-back against Vancouver today (1 p.m.) and Montreal tomorrow. Considering they haven’t won three in a row at home all season, reeling off three straight might seem out of the realm of possibility. But center David Krejci thinks it can happen.
“Oh yeah, 100 percent,” he said after practice at Warrior Ice Arena yesterday. “The way we played last game, that’s the way we have to play now until the end of the season. Special teams were great. From the first to fourth line, I thought we had a pretty decent game. Obviously there is always something you can improve on but overall I thought it was a solid game.”
The Bruins have twice won two straight at home but they’re just 13-13-0 at the Garden after beating San Jose 6-3 on Thursday. Regardless of the venue, the Bruins have found it difficult to sustain a high level of work ethic and quality of execution to really go on a run of success. Although they haven’t lost more than four in a row this season, their season-high winning streak is three.
Maybe the spark from both the change of coach and the tweaks to the system Cassidy has made, particularly with regard to an emphasis on aggression in the offensive zone, can help the Bruins build a lead in the standings. They need all the points they can get because during their week off the teams they’re battling for position will play some of their games in hand.
Cassidy doesn’t claim to have a magic formula for consistency. After all, he’s been with the Bruins all season as an assistant coach and would’ve used it if he had it. Nonetheless, the faster tempo of the Bruins’ play could at least lower the risk of a letdown.
“Well we addressed areas of our game from (Thursday) night that we were focusing on the previous couple days, and we did well,” Cassidy said. “And we talked about a few areas that we need to improve on. We had a good kind of similar-spirited practice today, generally what happens when you win, you’re in a good frame of mind.
“And that’s about it. We’ll talk about Vancouver, what we need to be successful and hopefully the guys are ready to go and we can establish that consistency.”
The Bruins players have been searching for an answer to their consistency problem all season. Maybe their mentality now is a little different because of the coaching change and because time’s running out in the season.
“I think part of it is focusing on the positive things that we did and trying to replicate that more often,” defenseman Adam McQuaid said. “That might be the simple answer, but also I think it’s just making that focus on executing and playing with tempo and then when we don’t execute because no game’s perfect, there’s human error, that we’re working hard to cover up for that.”