If the Boston Bruins are going to eventually scratch and claw their way into a postseason spot, it\u2019s going to be on the strength of being able to win hockey games in different ways. But it\u2019s also going to manifest itself with strong, gritty defense and errorless goaltending at the top of the list of team traits on most nights, and the B\u2019s showed both of those by winning a war of wills between two clearly fatigued hockey teams in a 1-0 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins on Sunday afternoon at TD Garden.<\/p>\n
It is not going to be a lasting piece of art hanging in a hockey museum as the Bruins were outshot 27-18 and went a dreadful 0-for-6 on a day when their power play did not come through for them at all.<\/p>\n
But they also found a way to secure two points through the muck, and that is worthy of note for the Black and Gold.<\/p>\n
The newly signed Jonathan Aspirot led the Bruins with four blocked shots, and Joonas Korpisalo earned Boston\u2019s first shutout of the season with 27 saves, including 10 apiece in each of the first two periods. While the polar opposite of Saturday\u2019s 10-goal offensive barrage that dazzled fans, Sunday\u2019s win was exactly the kind of grinding 200-foot effort that Marco Sturm\u00a0had asked his team to aim for when they were slumping a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cA game like today is not easy,\u201d said Sturm. \u201cI think we saw two tired teams out there and we needed a good goalie. And that\u2019s what we had today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bruins being able to cobble together that kind of a defensive effort without injured Hampus Lindholm\u00a0was impressive and has now pushed Boston back into a tie for the wild card spots with the Buffalo Sabres and Washington Capitals. It goes to show just how quickly fortunes and outlooks can change in the Eastern Conference this season when a team cobbles together even a modest winning streak during a grueling regular season schedule compacted by the Winter Olympics.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s been really noticeable over the last stretch has been the lack of penalties called on the Black and Gold in an area they truly needed to improve. They failed on six power play chances against Pittsburgh on Sunday, but they only handed one power play to Pittsburgh in an impressive show of discipline on a day they didn\u2019t have their great skating legs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019ve definitely been better at that the last few games,\u201d said Charlie McAvoy of the NHL\u2019s most penalized team, starting to stay out of the box. \u201cVirtually half the team will end up stale on the bench if we take all of these penalties. I mean, sometimes David Pastrnak can get stuck on the bench for half of a period because we\u2019re taking penalties, and that\u2019s never good to not be playing your best players.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s good habits, it\u2019s stick positioning and then there\u2019s the element of hockey. Stuff happens in the game. Nobody is out there trying to take penalties, but when it\u2019s been as consistent as it\u2019s been, it\u2019s on us with our habits. You\u2019re just alert and not slipping up mentally and being sharp to not take penalties. We know when we\u2019re idiots and when we do dumb stuff that can make us take penalties.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a different kind of \u201cidiots\u201d entirely than the band of Red Sox idiots that won the World Series back in 2004.<\/p>\n
The really good news is that <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the Boston Bruins are going to eventually scratch and claw their way into a postseason spot, it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5099],"tags":[154,95,5132,530,5,4,46049,46050],"class_list":{"0":"post-403983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-bruins","8":"tag-boston","9":"tag-boston-bruins","10":"tag-bostonbruins","11":"tag-bruins","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-top-bruins","15":"tag-top-story-2"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115884093843674535","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}