The Bruins will try to notch their fifth straight win and seventh in eight games when they take on their wounded nemesis, the Florida Panthers, in Sunrise on Thursday night.
Jeremy Swayman will be back between the pipes, the only change in the lineup from the B’s victory over the Dallas Stars on Tuesday. It is the start of a four-game road trip and a stretch of five of the last seven regular season games away from Causeway Street.
The Panthers, meanwhile, will be missing 11 regulars, including Brad Marchand and Sam Reinhart. But the Cats can still scratch, as evidenced by their helpful 6-3 win over Ottawa on Tuesday which also featured a pretty egregious elbow to the head of Senator Carter Yakemchuk that earned Gregor a match penalty.
The B’s just finished up a March in which they secured points in 13 of 16 games (10-3-3). They have not lost two straight games in regulation since losing back-to-back games to Ottawa and Montreal on December 21 and 23.
“We stayed with our game, with the program, going back to January and February,” coach Marco Sturm told reporters in Florida. “I was not too happy to have a break in February, honestly, because I felt like we had a good thing going and I didn’t want to mess it up. But having said that now, the guys came back exactly the same. It took us a little bit in February but I think in March it showed the result.”
The good work in March had them entering Thursday’s games eight points above cut line with 94 points while Ottawa, Detroit and Philadelphia all have 86 points. All three of those teams have a game in hand on the B’s. Boston is two points behind Montreal for third place in the Atlantic Division, though Montreal also has a game in hand. According to MoneyPuck.com, the B’s head into their tilt with a 98.3% chance of making the playoffs.
“I think we were really resilient, lots of close games, and it helped us get points out of those games and had some good wins, too,” said Fraser Minten. “Everyone’s finding the groove with the structure and the system. We had that really good month of January and it’s been consistent where we really haven’t had a stretch of poor play where it’s snowballed into a drastic loss of points. We’re doing a good job of stringing along points.”