“When they may not have their best game, they’re a good enough team that they’re capable of keeping themselves in the game, even to the point where they took the lead,’’ said Bruins coach Claude Julien. “As I was telling the players on the bench, we were playing so well. It was a 1-1 hockey game. It’s like, ‘This is what you’re going to be facing from here on in.’ We can’t expect to have blowouts like we did earlier in the season. They’re going to be tight games. We need to learn to win those types of games. We’re going to see a lot more of that. We have to be able to stay focused, positive, and find ways to win those.’’
Tomorrow, the Bruins host the Rangers, the Eastern Conference’s best team. The Bruins dropped a 3-2 overtime game to the Rangers on Jan. 21 at TD Garden.
Wednesday, the Bruins visit Montreal to start a six-game road swing, their longest of the year.
If the Bruins are going to march through these next seven games, they’ll need efforts similar to the one against the Predators. For most of 65 minutes, the Bruins played with purpose and smarts. They extended their shootout success when Tyler Seguin and Patrice Bergeron beat Pekka Rinne. The Bruins are 6-1 in shootouts. They are one of only three teams with a lone setback.
“I’m looking forward to it,’’ Julien said of tomorrow’s game. “I like the game we played them last time. Even though we lost, it was a heavy game with two teams that are hard to play against. That’s what we need right now. We had a great team coming in [Saturday] that was going to give us a challenge, and they did. We’ve got New York coming in, then we’ve got that six-game road trip that starts in Montreal. It’s probably what we need right now if we want to get ourselves going in the right direction. We need those kinds of challenges.’’
Standing pat?
The trade deadline is two weeks from today. Unless the market thaws considerably before then, the Bruins might be best to stand pat.
