There’s a hilarious scene in the comedy Old School where Will Ferrell’s character, Frank the Tank yells, “ We’re going streaking!” and then promptly removes his clothes and runs naked through streets. The Boston Bruins must be huge fans of Ferrell because they’ve done their best to emulate his streakiness. It truly has been a Jekyll and Hyde type of season for the Bruins.
They began the season with three straight losses, but then followed that lackluster start by winning six of their next seven games. At times they have looked unstoppable and then the next day they’ll go out and lay an egg (e.g. the Winter Classic at Foxboro Stadium on New Year’s). Boston has lost three games or more in a row this season a total of four times, however they have also had winning streaks of four or more games three times. Any fan of the black and gold will tell you how frustrating it is because you never really know which team will show up.
It’s not just their wins and losses that have come in streaks; it is also their offensive production. They have scored two or fewer goals 20 times this season but have also scored four or more goals 14 times.
On January 18th, the Bruins got back on the winning side of their streaky season against the worst team in the NHL, the Columbus Blue Jackets, winning in a shootout. Ryan Spooner and Torey Krug scored goals in the shootout for the Bruins.
Bruins’ coach Claude Julien on being happy to get two points despite blowing the two-goal lead, “It’s not so much the two goals that we gave up, it’s the way we played again tonight. We need to be better. I thought our intensity was good but not good enough and we need to be better with – when I say intensity, when you’re a little bit more intense so is your execution.”
“Yeah, we’re not going to have our best game every night and you have to be able to win games that you don’t play great in,” said Bruins forward Brad Marchand on this not being the team’s best game. “Regardless of if it’s in regulation or an overtime shootout, we needed the points and we have them and now we have to move on.”
