Raise your hand if you wrote the Bruins off in November. It’s okay if you did, it was a popular trend. Everyone and their grandmother decided the Bruins season was over after the firing of Jim Montgomery. The stats were ugly, the team’s play just as bad. Yet somewhere in there was the belief that the team had yet to play to its potential. The roster was better than their record indicated but it was up to the players to prove it. Enter Joe Sacco. A no-nonsense coach who tells it like it is. A man who is from the area and understands the culture of Boston. Who is blunt and to the point. Perhaps that is the message sender this Bruins team needed all along. Jim Montgomery is a great coach, no doubt about it, however the positive reinforcement-nice-guy style clearly had run its course. Maybe Jim knew his days were numbered. Maybe the players did too. He did turn down multiple contract extension offers in the offseason after all. To this writer it became clear what his hope was after signing a five-year deal in St. Louis a mere five days after parting ways with the Bruins. Hmmm. Maybe everyone is getting what they wanted after all huh? Sacco’s impact was immediate as the Bruins became a much more detail-oriented group defensively, which any Bruin fan will tell you has been their identity since the Claude Julien era. Gone are the blowout loses by 4, 5, 6 goals. Tight checking, attention to detail and a general willingness to compete, lost under Montgomery, suddenly returned to the Bruins game. The players will tell you they liked Montgomery and I believe them, however sometimes a voice simply has had its day and change is only natural. One player who seemingly found his footing under Joe Sacco is defenseman Nikita Zadorov who has struggled in his early Bruin tenure. Speaking after Tuesday’s 3-2 overtime win vs Detroit, the Russian defender didn’t hold back. “I think we’re playing with passion. I think we’re playing with pride,” Zadorov said. “I think we’re playing for each other. I thought we were disconnected before. That’s what wasn’t working. I don’t think we fixed much X’s and O’s. I think it’s the same system, same gameplans. We’re just doing that this time.” Sounds like the old coach wasn’t the long-term guy to me. The question moving forward for Sacco will be if he is in fact the guy long term.
Boston is off to a great December start as they are unbeaten at 4-0 through the first week of the month. One can look at the competition and say that the Bruins accomplished this versus non-playoff teams in Montreal, Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia. They would be right. Under Montgomery though the Bruins were losing those games. Case in point a 2-0 home loss to Philly in late October had the attention of everyone in the hockey world. These are the games the Bruins need to win and they’re doing just that. Taking care of business. A task that was apparently impossible in the early going has become more of what was to be expected from this group. Wins versus weaker opponents. For now, in this segment of the season, that is all you can hope for if you’re the Bruins or their fans. “It’s the confidence that we can find our game again, I think more than anything,” Charlie McAvoy said Saturday. “When we would lose it earlier in the year, we wouldn’t be able to get it back at all, or really anything that resembled it. We know what it looks like now, so it’s easier for us to kind of say, ‘Hey, let’s get back to doing it again and we’ll be all right. We’ll live with the result.” The schedule is about to get a lot more daunting this week as the team heads out on a ten-day road trip leading up to Christmas. Games in Winnipeg, Edmonton and Vancouver will certainly be big tests for the squad. Not all of their wins have come easily as there are still good and bad moments in their overall play. This recent success however should have them feeling good heading out west.
The B’s find themselves at 15-11-3 on December 9th and 7-2 with Sacco calling the shots. That’s good enough for third place in the Atlantic division. Whether they remain in that slot or slip down in to a wild card position remains to be seen. The playoffs themselves are still no lock, but one thing is for certain; The Bruins are starting to believe in themselves again.
G-Rant @TheRealG_Rant / Grant Cumming. Bruins fan. Bigger dreams, bigger screens, bigger feelings are planned.
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