BUFFALO – It’s no secret that the Bruins have played some very mediocre hockey in their own backyard at TD Garden this season. Still, the other side of that coin is their stellar body of work on the road that’s a big part of why they’re in the playoff mix right now.
The Bruins are tied with the Washington Capitals for the fewest regulation losses (five) in the NHL and continuously show better focus and desire in the other 29 NHL cities.
That’s good news with the Bruins traveling to Buffalo for Thursday night’s game at First Niagara Center and facing a road-heavy schedule in February, where seven of their next nine games will be played on the not-so long and winding road. It will include a season-high six game trip through stops as widespread as Winnipeg and Dallas – and everything in between – that could make or break the month for Boston.
Claude Julien cautioned, though, that it will be a tougher trick cranking out two-point wins on the road over the next few months with everybody girding for playoff position.
“We’ve just been better [on the road]. We’ve played better. I have no explanation other than we’ve played better, and we’ve played a better 60-minute game,” said Claude Julien. “At home we’ve had some slip-ups. It’s not that we haven’t been good at home, but we haven’t been good for 60 minutes. We’ve let games slip away from us and it’s resulted in some pretty crushing losses.
“It’s nice to know that we’re capable of winning on the road, but you always say the same thing…you still need to go out and win them. It’s getting tougher and tougher now with the games at this stage of the season where teams are all playing really well, and hard and battling for something. It’s not as easy as it was at the beginning of the year, so, we need to battle hard here on the road and make up for some of those road losses.”
One thing is for sure: the Black and Gold are in a better place in Buffalo trying to rebound from that awful loss to the Leafs 48 hours prior rather than feeling their way through another uneven performance in front of a restless home crowd.