In the Pittsburgh Penguins' last visit to TD Garden, Adam McQuaid scored the lone goal of the night while goaltender Tuukka Rask once again stood on his head, this time eliminating Sidney Crosby and company from the 2013 playoffs.
Sending a sellout crowd into a frenzy with the game-ending save on Flame-turned-Bruin-turned cruel prank-turned-Penguin Jarome Iginla, the win also sent the Black-and-Gold of Boston into their second Stanley Cup Final in just three years.
Five months and change later and not much has changed when it comes to the B's and Pens. Pittsburgh (15 wins and 30 points in 24 games this year) and the Bruins (15 wins and 32 points in 23 games this season) are still the undisputed best of the Eastern Conference.
The Bruins are once again finding themselves led by the play of the 26-year-old Rask, while the resurgent power-play has established its ground in 2013-14. For the Pens, Crosby continues to be well, Crosby, leading the league in points with 30 in just 24 contests.
The biggest change, of course, is the switch that the 36-year-old Iginla made.
Trading in his Pens uni for a Spoked-B this summer, Iginla has been a force with the Bruins all things considered, recording four goals and 13 points in 23 contests this year. Now, that's certainly not 'force'-like numbers, but when you look at Iginla's body of work in just a quarter of a year with Boston, it's clear that he's a player whose veteran leadership isn't lost on this club, ultimately pushing everybody to be a better player.
Iginla's effect has not only resulted in a strong year from linemates Milan Lucic and David Krejci, but allowed the rest of the offense to flow with confidence.
"I think they all want to have success and when some of those lines aren’t scoring as much as they’d like to, they as well want to be better and they want to find solutions. So for some of it, it’s always the same thing. When you’ve only been together for a few months, you just hope that the chemistry builds and builds as the season goes on and by the time crunch time comes around, they’re really comfortable with each other," B's coach Claude Julien said this morning when asked about the strength of the club's depth.
"But that’s what they have to do, they have to learn to kind of anticipate – and one of those lines which is the Kelly line – I don’t think they’re looking so much to make pretty plays, they’re looking more for efficient plays and right now it’s working well for them," said Julien, adding, "And when you’re a line that has a lot of skill, there’s times – and it’s a normal thing for every team – that those guys sometimes look for the prettier plays versus the efficient ones."
Efficient has to be the key against a Pittsburgh club that ultimately bested the B's the last time around, downing Rask and company by a 3-2 final back on Oct. 30.
"All I remember is I didn’t think we were as good as we should have been. And that wasn’t to take away – I’m certainly not going to evaluate Pittsburgh’s game – I looked at our team and after two periods I just felt like there wasn’t enough emotion; there wasn’t enough in our game and for us to be a team that had a chance to win," Julien noted of that loss. "We got a bit sloppy at times and turned some pucks over which ended up being some winning goals. But I think when we play each other, we’re two of the better teams in the conference and in my mind it should have been played with a lot more intensity than it was."
If intensity's the name of the game, that shouldn't necessarily be an issue given the strength of this club's goaltenders, leaving an expected crowd of 17,565 in Boston with a classic defensive battle of the Penguins' best versus the B's best.
In net, the Bruins will (obviously) get the start to Rask.
Entering play with the league's third best save percentage (.945) and goals against average (1.62), the Finnish netminder takes to the Garden ice tonight with a 7-3-2 home record in 2013-14, with a .947 save percentage over that stretch. It's also a chance for Rask, who took the loss in the last meeting between these two, to redeem himself and bolster his rough figures against a Pittsburgh team he's beaten just once in six career regular season games. And on the heels of a three-game workload last week, the Bruins are confident that Rask's ready to go after a Saturday breather.
"He’s capable of handling it. There’s certain games like the New York game where he had a busy night but there’s other games like the game in Carolina I thought, and he said himself, he didn’t feel like he had much to do," Julien noted of Rask's workload. "You look at it in a way where, what’s your team doing in front of him, how hard of a night is he getting, and you take it from there. I think if we had some question marks on his endurance, I think those were answered last year and again this year so far."
Pittsburgh will counter with Marc-Andre Fleury, a goaltender that rolls into the Hub with just three wins in his last eight contests despite a .923 save percentage on the year.
Working in Fleury's favor, however, is a career record of 5-1-1 with a .939 save percentage in eight games at TD Garden.