Who: Boston Bruins (35-22-5, 75 points, 5th place Atlantic Division) @ Pittsburgh Penguins (31-17-14, 76 points, 2nd place Metropolitan Division)

How to Watch: National game on TNT and TruTV, streaming on HBOMax

Pens’ Path Ahead: The Pens take a long road trip that starts and ends in Carolina with games on Tuesday and next Thursday March 18th. In between, they go a long ways with stops next week in Vegas, Utah and Colorado before returning back east.

Opponent Track: Since beating the Penguins 2-1 on Tuesday night, the Bruins lost 6-3 to Nashville and then defeated the Capitals 3-1 yesterday in Boston. After today they head back home for their next two games this week.

Season Series: It hasn’t been fun for Pittsburgh to see that other team in black and gold. Boston won a 1-0 game back on January 11th, then took a 2-1 game earlier in the week. The Pens and struggling to score against the Bruins is unfortunately an all-too-familiar trope in the Sidney Crosby era. Luckily today is the third and final PIT/BOS game of the season.

Hidden Stat: The Bruins have the second worst away record in the Eastern Conference (their 11-14-4 is just ahead of Toronto’s 11-15-4). However, the Penguins have only won 16 of their 32 home games this season (16-9-7) for one of the worst home records in the East.

Getting to know the Bruins

Marat Khusnutdinov – Elias Lindholm – David Pastrnak

Casey Mittelstadt – Pavel Zacha – Viktor Arvidsson

Alex Steeves – Fraser Minten – Morgan Geekie

Tanner Jeannot – Sean Kuraly – Mark Kastelic

Jonathan Aspirot / Charlie McAvoy

Hampus Lindholm / Mason Lohrei

Nikita Zadorov / Andrew Peeke

Goalies: Joona Korpisalo (Jeremy Swayman played yesterday)

Potential scratches: Michael Eyssimont, Henri Jokirharju, Jordan Harris, Lukas Reichel (newly acquired)

Quiet trade deadline for the Bruins, who picked up forward Lukas Reichel for a sixth round pick and..that’s it. Much like the Penguins as a potential playoff team, Boston wasn’t interested in paying big costs to add veteran players at this time.It would be fun if Boston makes it to the playoffs since their tough physical style and defensive nature is kinda going against the grain of a lot of teams these days who might have a little more speed and skill. It’s very possible Boston ends up as a Wild Card and might have to play a division winner like Carolina or Tampa in the first round. And, honestly, I think the Bruins are going to at least make an uncomfortable, long series out if it.Swayman played yesterday, but that might not be a huge break for the Penguins to presumably see the backup goalie today. Korpisalo’s stats since Christmas (5-2-2, 2.61 GAA, .911 save%) are virtually identical to Swayman (10-3-2, 2.62 GAA, .912 save%). Seeing the backup in this situation, unfortunately, doesn’t look quite as beneficial as it might be in other instances.

Egor Chinakhov – Rickard Rakell – Bryan Rust

Anthony Mantha – Tommy Novak – Justin Brazeau

Ville Koivunen – Ben Kindel – Avery Hayes

Connor Dewar – Blake Lizotte – Noel Acciari

Parker Wotherspoon / Erik Karlsson

Ryan Shea / Connor Clifton

Goalies: Arturs Silovs (Stuart Skinner played yesterday)

Potential Scratches: Evgeni Malkin (suspended), Ryan Graves, Ilya Solovyov, Kevin Hayes

IR: Sidney Crosby, Filip Hallander, Jack St. Ivany

This is a kind of gut check game for the Pens, who just saw this Boston team last week and lost a hard-fought road game. It’s going to take a lot to dig deep on the back-to-back and get a good result against a tough opponent for them recently, which also means it’s a great opportunity to see if anyone can step up and stand out.

Two top performing goaltending tandems

A key to the Pens and Bruins finding success in the last quarter of the season has been superior goaltending inputs. Both teams have been getting a ton of saves at key times, pilling up towards the top of the league as far as the goaltending performances have gone. Given that both teams are on a b-2-b, Boston traveled, daylight saving time and a strange 4:30pm start and that there has been a 1-0 and 2-1 final scores in the early PIT/BOS games, you’d probably expect a low-scoring contest to unfold today with goalie performances like this leading the way. (That said, of course watch it be a 5-3 game today).