BOSTON — Midway through the NHL season, the Boston Bruins lost five games in regulation. One of those came against the Seattle Kraken at TD Garden on Thursday, their first regulation loss at home this season.
Another came on Nov. 5, 2-1 against the Toronto Maple Leafs, in the only game between the top two teams in the Atlantic Division.
The Maple Leafs will get another shot at the top team in the Atlantic and the NHL at TD Garden on Saturday (7 p.m. ET; NHLN, CBC, SNO, SNW, NESN, SN NOW).
Still, as Maple Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe said Thursday, “It’s not much of a contest at this point.”
The Bruins (32-5-4) are nine points ahead of the Maple Leafs (26-10-7) in the Atlantic, and as Keefe pointed out, Boston is on a historic pace.
“They’re playing at a pace that’s the highest winning percentage in NHL history,” Keefe said. “But we’d like to make it so they’re trying to keep up that pace or we’re going to be right there.” So it really is.”
It just means Toronto needs to make the most of its chances.
“They were the class of the League for sure,” defenseman Mark Giordano said. “We played them at the beginning of the year. It was a good match. They are a fast team, they play back and forth, but [Saturday] it will be an exciting game. I think obviously we want to see where they are and where we are at the moment and that will be a good test.
“If we’re going to give ourselves a chance to catch them, we’ve got to break away, break away in the next few weeks.”
And it’s possible the Maple Leafs could catch the Bruins at the right time. There was buzz about Boston hosting the Discover NHL Winter Classic on January 2, 2023, a 2-1 victory against the Pittsburgh Penguins at Fenway Park, followed by a weeklong trip to the West Coast where the Bruins defeated the Los Angeles Kings, San Jose Sharks and Anaheim Ducks 16-5 overall.
They will be two days removed from a 3-0 loss to the Kraken, which prompted coach Jim Montgomery to cite “mental fatigue” as the culprit.
On the other hand, the Bruins haven’t lost back-to-back games all season.
“It’s a bigger game than the average regular season game,” Montgomery said. “We have to get our game together and tomorrow is a good opportunity against one of the teams … I would say Toronto, Carolina and us are probably the three teams that have been consistently the best so far this year. So it’s a good test for us.”
Complicating matters for the Maple Leafs is the potential absence of forward Auston Matthews, who has 47 points (20 goals, 27 assists) in 41 games this season. He missed two games with an undisclosed injury, and then Matthews woke up sick Thursday, Keefe said.
Video: Matthews’ 2 goals lead Maple Leafs to 2-1 win
Matthews scored both goals when the teams played in November, but this game was more about what the Maple Leafs did defensively, limiting the Bruins to a season-low 21 shots on goal.
Montgomery believed the Kraken do some of the same things defensively as the Maple Leafs, which the Bruins hope will prepare them better for Saturday.
“Very similar to what Seattle did,” Montgomery said. “There were five of them together. They were above us. They defended the middle of the ice really well in their own end. This game combined with the game last night are learning opportunities for us. How to create more attack when we play teams that play a tight check.”
But most of all, the Bruins and Maple Leafs are looking forward to the challenge and the opportunity. It’s a #1 vs. #2 scenario, with Toronto tied with the Carolina Hurricanes (26-9-7) for second in the NHL in points.
“It’s going to be really fun,” Maple Leafs defenseman Rasmus Sandin said. “These are the games you really enjoy playing. It will be difficult. They’re going… I think we’re going to be very, very pumped up for this game.”
The Bruins will be too. They entered Friday’s practice with what Montgomery called “an empty feeling in your stomach, and we haven’t had that.”
He said it’s something that could anger the team, could rile them up enough to rev up when another big-time opponent walks into a building they’ve dominated all season.
Which all adds up to a great Saturday night.
“We’ve got this date on our calendar that it’s going to be a big one,” Maple Leafs forward Zach Aston-Reese said. “It gets us going into this final stretch of the season that we have left. We got the win there, I think that will be huge for our confidence.”
NHL.com columnist Nicholas J. Kotsonica contributed to this report
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