BOSTON -- The Bruins got a wakeup call earlier this week when management decided to fire head coach Jim Montgomery after an 8-9-3 start to the season, and the players responded with a strong performance Thursday night against the Utah Hockey Club.
The Bruins earned a hard-fought 1-0 win at TD Garden, giving Joe Sacco his first win as interim head coach.
The B's showed improvement in several key areas, most notably special teams.
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The power play entered Thursday with a league-worst 11.7 percent success rate. That unit moved the puck better, consistently created scoring chances and found the back of the net when Elias Lindholm scored his first goal in 18 games. Boston's power-play went 1-for-7 overall, but it tallied 18 shots, 10 scoring chances and six high-danger chances. There was an energy and crispness that was lacking in previous games.
Elias Lindholm gets the monkey off his back after a month without a goal 🐵 pic.twitter.com/5IadZqFSTU
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) November 22, 2024
The penalty kill also stepped up with a perfect 4-for-4 showing, including a tremendous kill late in the third period during which the Bruins allowed zero shots to the Utah power play while protecting a 1-0 lead. Boston's penalty kill ranked 25th in the league coming into this game.
The Bruins also appear to be a shot quantity team under Sacco. They were more of a shot quality group with Montgomery, but with the team so desperate to score -- it ranks 31st in goals scored per game -- firing as many pucks on net as possible is the right approach for this roster. The Bruins finished with 31 shots against Utah -- just the sixth time they've tallied 30-plus in a game this season.
While this win was certainly a step in the right direction, it won't matter much if the Bruins don't build on it and establish some consistency in terms of how they play and winning games. We've seen the Bruins bounce back from bad performances a couple times this season, only to see that momentum destroyed by more brutal defeats.
For example, the Bruins lost 8-2 on the road against the Carolina Hurricanes on Halloween to fall to 4-6-1. They recovered with back-to-back shutout wins over the Philadelphia Flyers and Seattle Kraken the following weekend. It appeared the B's had turned a corner, but they went to Toronto two days later and lost 4-0 to the Leafs.
The Bruins lost 3-2 in an ugly game against the Ottawa Senators on Nov. 9. They trailed 2-0 entering the third period the following game against the St. Louis Blues, then scored three unanswered goals for their first third-period comeback win of the campaign. That result in St. Louis felt like a season-changing win, but it ended up being Montgomery's last victory behind the bench as Boston lost its next three games.
The "one step forward, two steps back" trend has to turn around for the Bruins if they're going to start climbing the standings and live up to their potential. The B's have a 2-3-2 record after a victory this season, and they have yet to win more than two games in a row.
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How do the Bruins build off Thursday's win?
"Just details and habits," Sacco said postgame. "Make sure that tomorrow at practice we're ready to go. It's one game. We have a long way to go. Focus on tomorrow's practice and make sure our habits are good and that we're covering all the details we want. I think it's something to build off right now."
Bruins captain Brad Marchand also brought up practice when asked how the team can build some momentum and string a few wins together.
"Practice habits are where you develop all of your game habits," Marchand said postgame. "It's such a cliché thing, but you practice how you play. When you practice bad, you play bad. When we compete in practice and have high tempo and are crisp and detailed, playing direct to the net and chipping pucks, that carries into the game. It's all momentum.
"You have a bad practice, that momentum carries into the game, too. You want to see it in the game, but I want to see it more in practice everyday. That's where you build your consistency and your compete. You build it in practice, you show it in games."
The upcoming schedule should help the Bruins accumulate some much-needed points in the standings.
The next eight games are all against teams outside of a playoff spot right now, and five of those matchups are at home. This is an important stretch for the Bruins to build good habits, keep improving in areas like special teams and 5-on-5 scoring, and get their season back on track.
Even though the Bruins have played well below expectations so far, they are still tied with the Buffalo Sabres in the second wild card playoff spot in the Eastern Conference with 61 games left to play.
This win over Utah was a step in the right direction. Keeping the momentum going is the next challenge.