BOSTON \u2013\u2013 The Boston Bruins got right back to work.<\/p>\n
After beating the Columbus Blue Jackets 3-2 on Sunday night at Nationwide Arena, the team had an optional skate on Monday at TD Garden. The B\u2019s will close out the regular season on Tuesday when they host the New Jersey Devils.<\/p>\n
A win over the Devils can secure the first wild-card seeding in the Eastern Conference for the Bruins, who clinched a playoff berth on Saturday.\u200b<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was just important to go back to winning, first of all, to feel good again. Totally different today when we came in. Guys are happy, they\u2019re loud,\u201d head coach Marco Sturm said. \u201cI think that, for us, is very important to go into the playoffs like that. Whatever happens happens, who we are going to play \u2013 it really doesn\u2019t matter. We want to win. We wanted to win yesterday, and we want to win tomorrow. That, I feel like, gives us the best chance to start a good playoffs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Charlie McAvoy, Pavel Zacha, Viktor Arvidsson, Hampus Lindholm, Tanner Jeannot and Jeremy Swayman sat out of Sunday\u2019s game against the Blue Jackets to rest, and all hit the ice on Monday. Sturm said he expects to play most of his regulars on Tuesday, but will circle back to see how they are feeling.\u200b<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was nice. Just have a day, watch the game, get some rest,\u201d Zacha said. \u201cI think it was a good decision. We have to be ready for tomorrow.\u201d\u200b<\/p>\n
Zacha has posted a career-high 64 points this season, including the first 30-goal year of his NHL tenure. The 29-year-old forward has remained on the second line with Casey Mittelstadt and Arvidsson.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou set goals before the season, and I think that was one of my goals. I thought it was pretty far, but with how we played this year and the linemates that I had, they helped me a lot,\u201d Zacha said. \u201cI think everyone did their job this season to get us where we are, and I\u2019m happy I could contribute that way, too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOSTON \u2013\u2013 The Boston Bruins got right back to work. After beating the Columbus Blue Jackets 3-2 on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[5],"class_list":{"0":"post-551906","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-hockey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116398855611038746","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551906","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=551906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}