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It was 80 degrees in Boston on Wednesday, and the city is buzzing after the latest effort by the hometown Boston Bruins, a thrilling 1-0 overtime victory over the first-place Tampa Bay Lightning. And if you closed your eyes, I swear you could have thought it was mid-May and the B’s were in the thick of a second-round matchup with the Lightning. But even though it’s still just March 9th, the win moved Bruins moved into a points tie with the Bolts for first in the Atlantic Division. They have also now taken seven of their last 10 (a 7-2-1 record), including a 4-0-1 mark since the trade deadline acquisitions of veteran forward
Lee Stempniak and mobile defenseman
John-Michael Liles.
And in their last five games, the Bruins have done it all. They won ugly against Calgary, they dominated the Chicago Blackhawks, pushed the East-best Washington Capitals to overtime, and swept the Sunshine State two games in two nights tour with overtime wins over both the Panthers and Bolts.
They’ve been the aggressors, and other nights they’ve let the flow of the game come their way (sometimes to a fault). They’ve smothered some of the league’s best offensive talents (
Johnny Gaudreau and
Patrick Kane were swallowed up by the Boston defense, while Alex Ovechkin and Steven Stamkos were held relatively quiet). And they’ve weathered storms, including a 51-shot night from the ‘Cats and a 42-shot barrage from Tampa Bay on Tuesday night. And their goaltending, headlined by the play of
Tuukka Rask and a 42-save shutout cameo by
Jonas Gustavsson on Tuesday night at Amalie Arena, has been straight crazy throughout this stretch.
So, is it time to talk about the Black and Gold as legitimate contenders in the Eastern Conference?
The short answer? Yes. The long answer? Well, about that.
First, on the roster front, the addition of Stempniak has been a complete revelation for the Bruins. On the right wing with
Patrice Bergeron and
Brad Marchand, Stempniak has fit in with the B’s dynamic duo seamlessly, with one goal and five assists in just five games with the Bruins. That’s allowed the Bruins to put
Brett Connolly into a scoring role on the fourth line, which has given the Bruins their best offensive balance of the year, if not in actual years, in fact. And while you’re not expecting the 35-year-old Liles to be the shutdown, No. 2 defenseman that the Bruins have needed to put alongside
Zdeno Chara since the Johnny Boychuk trade in Oct. ‘14, it’s clear that his veteran know-how has eased guys like Joe Morrow and Zach Trotman out of roles they might not have been ready for, at least if the Black and Gold were serious about contending in this wide open East.
And they’ve figured out how to win in different fashion. That was something that the 2014-15 Bruins struggled to do. If they couldn’t find a way to win the game on their terms, or in a way that was familiar to their style and tendencies, they simply did not win that game. But now the Bruins have learned how to lean on scoring, defensive efforts (though it’s no longer their go-to), and strong goaltending.
To win in the postseason, you have to be diverse, which the Bruins were in both of their prior runs to the fourth round under head coach
Claude Julien. But for Julien to win in the postseason, it does come back to what the goaltender is doing, as hot runs from
Tim Thomas in 2011 and Rask in ‘13 propelled the Bruins beyond what was initially expected of them. And the year has been a continual climb for Rask, with improved marks in nearly every month of the season.
It’s also fairly obvious that the Bruins are the second-best team in the Atlantic next to the Lightning -- and even then, it may be a 1A/1B type of thing when it comes the Bruins and Bolts -- and that they could hang and likely outlast the Panthers or the Detroit Red Wings in a first-round series.
Yes, the Bruins’ win over Florida on Monday was anything but convincing by the end of the night, but given Rask’s overwhelmingly dominant career numbers against the ‘Cats (15 wins and a .952 save percentage in 18 games) and season series (three wins in three games for the Bruins), expecting the Panthers to pull a first-round series win off against the Bruins seems improbable. And if you’re in a situation where it’s the Bruins against the Lightning in round two, a coin flip might be your best bet, as both of these teams have gone through stretches where their flaws have been exposed as potentially fatal, while the B’s have found success in Tampa’s barn while the Bolts have done the same in Boston.
And while I think it’s easy to point at the B’s success in the ‘Hawks and Caps games and write it off when you see that both teams were on the second leg of a back-to-back (with travel) and starting their backup netminders;
Scott Darling in net opposed to two-time Stanley Cup winner
Corey Crawford in Chicago’s case and
Philipp Grubauer in Washington’s crease instead of Vezina (and maybe even Hart) favorite
Braden Holtby. But you can absolutely go back to what the Bruins did in their own end versus what they did against weaker competition at the other. With the exception of the odd turnover here and there, a natural in a 60-minute battle, the Bruins limited two of the league’s best offenses to low-percentage opportunities and perimeter shots.
“I think the guys showed they can obviously follow a game plan, and you have to have different game plans against different teams because of how they play,” Julien said after the Washington game. “I think our guys showed the other night, [Saturday] again, that we’re capable of playing our game, but also making some small adjustments to some of the things that they do.”
Did the Bruins take advantage of a tired team? Of course.
But who’s to suggest that wouldn’t be the case if the Bruins met the Capitals (or anybody else) in the third round or the Blackhawks (or, again, anybody else) in the Stanley Cup Final? It was in 2013 that the Bruins’ 12-game ride to the Eastern Conference Final that kept them fresh for a third-round sweep of the vaunted Pittsburgh Penguins. And while those same Penguins came into that series with Boston with fewer games played at that point, you had a feeling that the Bruins’ road was just slightly less taxing on their bodies than the six-game, hellacious first-round series the Pens had with the Islanders and five-game war with Ottawa. The Penguins just
looked like a team that was worn down by the end of the Boston series. That very well could be the case if the Capitals have to storm through a surging wild card club (like Philadelphia, for example) and then one of the New York Islanders or New York Rangers in round two. Factor that in with a huge regular-season workload for some of the Caps’ key pieces, and the Bruins may be able to once again expose some tired legs on that Caps bench.
Of course, the Bruins have to first win a round -- two, actually -- before they begin to worry about the state of the Capitals, Islanders, or Rangers in round three. But for the first time all season, you can feel at least somewhat comfortable that this team is capable of
actually reaching that point.
And it ain’t springtime in Boston without that.
Ty Anderson has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, has been a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter since 2013, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com.
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • 
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