January was the best month of the 2025-26 Bruins season, and their home record was as good as it could have been.<\/p>\n
The 2025-26 season has been filled with all sorts of streaks, both winning and losing. This one stands above the rest; the Bruins have nine straight wins at the TD Garden. It is the longest home winning streak since the 2022-23 season (14).\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very impressive the way we played in January,\u201d said Marco Sturm after Thursday\u2019s 6-3 win<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s a tough month. Always been. It\u2019s a grind after Christmas to come back.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n How the Bruins achieved their impressive month was Sturm\u2019s larger takeaway:<\/p>\n \u201cThe way we played, too, I thought it was really, really good; very consistent, very hard, structured. Our best players were our best players: David was outstanding, goalies were back to business. A lot of good things happened, especially at home. We feel very comfortable at home.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the nine home games, the Bruins outscored their opponents 39-16. A ten-goal game<\/a> against the Rangers helped, but even without that game, the Bruins still outscored opponents 29-14.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think just sticking to what we do that gives us success,\u201d Tanner Jeannot said on Thursday about the team\u2019s recent play<\/a>. \u201cThat\u2019s playing fast, getting pucks out of our zone quick, and getting them behind their (defensemen) and working around the o-zone. Guys have just been really buying into that. We\u2019ve been closing quickly in the d-zone to get the pucks out, and guys have been executing offensively.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n As Sturm said, the \u201cgoalies were back to business.\u201d Although the Bruins outscored their opponents by 23 goals, the black and gold were outshot 260-252 by their nine opponents. Quality over quantity; the Bruins scored at a 15.48% rate, and their opponents only scored on 6.15% of their shots.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jeremy Swayman backstopped the Bruins to six home wins in January; Korpisalo picked up the other three. Together, the goaltenders combined for back-to-back<\/a> shutouts<\/a> and held a combined shutout streak of 153:55.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI mentioned it when we came back from New York,\u201d Sturm added on Thursday. \u201cI think everyone was just glad to come home and have a tough game the next day, with the travel and everything because of it. We feel good, we feel like we play our best hockey here. We feel like the fans are behind us, and hopefully, down the stretch, March, April, it\u2019s going to help us. Winning those big games and getting those big points at home.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The Bruins have 21 home wins this season, the most in the NHL.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the month, the Bruins went 11-2-1. Across the league, they had the second-best power play (33.3%), they scored the fifth-most goals (56), and allowed the fifth-least (37).\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s definitely the five-on-five game,\u201d said Sturm, when asked what he has seen as the biggest improvement since starting his coaching tenure. \u201cI\u2019m a big believer in a five-on-five hockey game, playing a very good structured game. I think there\u2019s still room to grow, but overall, I think we feel very, very good.\u201d<\/p>\n The Bruins added 39 goals at five-on-five in January and allowed 19 goals. At five-on-five, the Bruins have allowed 103 goals, the tenth-fewest in the league.\u00a0<\/p>\n They have scored the fourth-most goals (184) in the league. Additionally, they scored four or more goals in six of their nine home games in January.<\/p>\n \u201cAlso, our goal production,\u201d Sturm added. \u201cHere it is. Now, we score more goals, and now we have to more focus on defending. So, it\u2019s interesting how things turned out, but I\u2019m very happy where we\u2019re at right now.\u201d<\/p>\n The power play has been a success all season<\/a>; it currently ranks fourth in the league (26.8%). It\u2019s a massive change from where the Bruins were last season (29th).\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPower play has been excellent. I think that\u2019s better than I thought,\u201d Sturm said. \u201cI know we had some good players on it, but I didn\u2019t know that, also with a new coach, [Steve Spott] coming in, he just \u2013 a lot of unknowns. That\u2019s something, it\u2019s definitely better than I thought.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n David Pastrnak led the way with eight power play points; he also put together an eight-game point streak (3-11\u201314), ranging from January 13 through 27. Morgan Geekie followed with seven power play points; he snapped a goal-scoring drought in January and ended the month with a six-game point streak (5-3\u20138).\u00a0<\/p>\n While Pastrnak and Geekie drove the offense, Fraser Minten emerged as one of January\u2019s biggest internal wins. Marco Sturm called him \u201ca steal\u201d after practice on Friday. He started in a top-six center role<\/a> on Thursday and answered the call with a three-point night. Due to injuries<\/a>, he might stay in a top-six role for Sunday\u2019s Stadium Series.\u00a0<\/p>\n Minten had 14 points (8-6\u201314) in the 14 games in January. His eight goals led the team in January, and he finished with the team\u2019s second-best plus-minus rating with a plus-12. He only ranked behind Pastrnak (25) and Charlie McAvoy (16) for the most points on the team in January.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019ve just been more consistent and resilient with our structure, the way we want to play,\u201d Minten said about what has gone right in January. \u201cLet in first goals sometimes, comeback win, stuff like that, that maybe earlier on in the year would have had different results.\u201d<\/p>\n Minten has been utilized everywhere in the lineup. Marco Sturm will move him up to the first line to give the unit a jump. He also plays on both the power play and the penalty kill.<\/p>\n February will look different for the Bruins; the schedule features four games. The team is currently in Tampa, FL, for the 2026 Stadium Series. The Bruins will continue their southern swing with a game in Sunrise on Wednesday, and that will be it until February 26.\u00a0<\/p>\n The NHL will enter an Olympic break after games conclude on February 4. Eight players from the Bruins organization are headed to Milan for the 2026 games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"January was the best month of the 2025-26 Bruins season, and their home record was as good as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5099],"tags":[154,95,5132,530,2178,58,4112,5,6164,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-439153","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-david-pastrnak","13":"tag-featured","14":"tag-fraser-minten","15":"tag-hockey","16":"tag-marco-sturm","17":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115993348919625279","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439153","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=439153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}