The Bruins have a boatload of experience in their dressing room, but even the most senior of players have never found themselves in the situation they are in right now, enviable though it may be.
They are a whopping 19 points ahead of the Toronto Maple Leafs for the Atlantic Division crown, and they have a 13-point over the Carolina Hurricanes for the Presidents’ Trophy and home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs.
While the B’s still need to fine-tune their game – the struggling power play is the first thing that comes to mind – it doesn’t appear that they will have the benefit of meaningful competition in the standings to push them along.
The 49-8-5 B’s have given signs that that dynamic will not throw them off course. But in a profession for which competition is the lifeblood, it does present a challenge.
“It’s different. It definitely is,” said Charlie Coyle after Monday’s practice. “You want to always be challenged, right? We can create little challenges within our season. We can say ‘Hey, these next three games coming up. It’s a three-game series. We’ve got to win at least two of them,’ kind of like a playoff series. And we can use those kind of challenges to make sure we’re focused in and getting the job done.
“I think you can incorporate little games and challenges like that. I think that can help. It gets your mind in the right place so it’s not just another game in Seattle, or a back-to-back in Calgary and Edmonton. It keeps you mentally in there, mentally focused. You think to yourself ‘This is a must-win game. Let’s get it done.’
“Just get your mind right. Because that’s what it’s going to take. You don’t want to get lackadaisical when you’re up in the standings. You can kind of coast. But we don’t want to coast. You want to make sure we’re pressured and we’re prepping for playoffs. We want that intensity. It’s hard to mimic at times during the year. But if we can do that internally, I think that’s going to help.”
Coach Jim Montgomery said the B’s took that three-game playoff series mentality at the start of the most recent trip. After the B’s won the first two games in Seattle and Vancouver to win the imagined series, the psychology was changed. They treated the game in Vancouver as Game 7 of a series and then they were faced with playing Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers in Game 1 of the next “series” on one day of rest.
“It’s such a great league that there’s always different ways to be able to create challenges that we think is going to help us in the long-term,” said Montgomery, whose team has 20 games left.
But while the coaching staff can institute all sorts of mental gymnastics, the team’s culture and ethos are what makes it all work.
“We don’t change what our outlook has been,” said Montgomery. “We’ve had a fairly comfortable lead for a while. And (assistant coach) Joe Sacco said it best when we were on the road. I don’t remember where we were, but he said ‘It’s amazing how hard these guys play,’ knowing what we all are talking about right now. We continually talk about areas we need to get better at. We don’t ever talk about what you guys are asking about. We don’t think ‘we can go 5-15 and probably finish first.’ I don’t know if that’s true, though it’s not far from the truth, probably. But we don’t analyze the mathematics of it. We just worry about where we’re headed and how we think we have to get there.”
One carrot that the B’s are not dangling in front of themselves is catching the 1976-77 Montreal Canadiens, who hold the record for most points with 133.
Beating that mark would come with a couple of asterisks in that the Habs did that in an 80-game schedule and that it was in the pre-overtime era when the second OT point was not available. But there’s are also the wins record of 62 held by the 1995-96 Red Wings and the 2018-19 Tampa Bay Lightning, neither of whom won the Stanley Cup, by the way.
The B’s did not want to be a regular-season wonder.
“If anything, we’re talking about not letting that get into our heads too much,” said Coyle of the records. “I can’t tell you who the last great team was to be the best in the regular season. I don’t think people remember that, unless you’re looking at a stat book, you may see that. But if you don’t win a championship while doing that, I don’t think it matters. We know what the end result is (what’s desired). If we do that, then we can look back on that stuff and say ‘Hey, look at the regular season.’ But the regular season means nothing if we don’t get that end goal.” …
• With the aid of crutches, Nick Foligno passed through the dressing room with a right knee heavily bandaged. Meanwhile, there’s no definitive course of action on Taylor Hall, who sought a second opinion on his lower body injury. There is no timetable for either player.
“They’re both in the same situation… they both feel really good but they’re not at a place where they can even be thought about being players. And… we haven’t gotten any feedback from the second opinion yet,” said Montgomery.
MAPLE LEAFS: Center Ryan O’Reilly will be out of action for quite some time because of a broken finger.
O’Reilly is going on long-term injured reserve, Coach Sheldon Keefe said. That means the 32-year-old must miss the next 10 games.
He won’t be eligible to return until Toronto’s game March 29 against Florida at the earliest. The playoffs are set to begin April 17.
The Maple Leafs acquired O’Reilly in a trade with St. Louis last month. He has since put up five points in eight games before taking a puck off his left hand late in the second period of a 4-1 loss Saturday night at Vancouver.
Keefe added Leafs captain John Tavares will be held out of the lineup with an undisclosed ailment when the team visits the New Jersey Devils on Tuesday to wrap up a five-game trip.
In corresponding moves, the Leafs recalled forwards Pontus Holmberg and Alex Steeves from the American Hockey League’s Toronto Marlies, and loaned goaltender Joseph Woll to the club’s top affiliate.
MONDAY’S GAMES
OILERS 3, SABRES 2: Connor McDavid scored twice, giving him an NHL-leading 54 goals this season, and Edmonton won at Buffalo, New York.
In continuing to make his case for his third Hart MVP Trophy in eight NHL seasons, McDavid upped his league-leading points total to a career-best 124 — one more than he finished with last year — and enjoyed his 12th multigoal game of the season. McDavid also extended his points streak to 11 games, in which the Oilers’ captain has 12 goals and 15 assists.
SHARKS 3, JETS 2: Logan Couture scored at 1:21 of overtime as San Jose won at Winnipeg, Manitoba.
The Jets had a 2-1 lead until Tomas Hertl scored with 11 seconds left in the third period.
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