Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports
The Boston Bruins are in a pretty good place right now as they come home for game five of their quarterfinal Stanley Cup Playoffs series against the Toronto Maple Leafs. They won two games in a row for the first time in basically a month (they sewed together two wins on April 8 and 10), silenced the raucous crowds inside and outside Air Canada Centre twice in a row, got the series lead up to three and saw David Krejci score another playoff hat trick.
The line that Krejci is on is really leading the way in the playoffs so far, there’s no doubt about it. Krejci has five each of goals and assists, Nathan Horton three each and Milan Lucic has six helpers. By comparison, though, many of the other forwards are kind of slacking, netting maybe one or two points so far in this series. Sure, there’s still time to improve that. The top line is just excellent in the postseason as well–they’ve been great at this before and are doing it again. But it would be nice for the scoring to be a little more balanced.
Speaking of Horton, who took a somewhat nasty-looking hit right before Krejci scored the overtime goal–he actually received the MVP jacket–he was seen smiling that signature smile at practice today and said he was feeling fine. Thank goodness. That hit worried me and for a while there, no one at all seemed to know how he was feeling.
Horton being rewarded for taking that hit and just carrying on is indicative of how the Bruins seemed relentless in their pursuit of a win last night. Between Johnny Boychuk absorbing the shot, Chris Kelly getting a nasty cut from a high-stick, Tuukka Rask being in the zone, Rich Peverley acknowledging that the playoffs are a whatever-it-takes kind of time–now it’s time to see if the Bruins have that killer instinct because of what is on the line tomorrow night.
(By the way, on the topic of Rask’s Vezina snub, Shawn Thornton said that his goalie is underrated, but that he doesn’t need the public recognition. He also mistakenly thought that the members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association vote on the Vezina. Easy mistake to make, Thorts.)
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