Claude Julien is known for his defensive system and winning with goaltending and a strong blue line presence. So it's probably not worth asking him what he thinks of the fact that in the Bruins' seven wins, they've scored three or more goals, and in their seven losses, they've scored two or fewer goals.
After another six-goal effort, though, Boston's back at .500, and they owe a lot of it to their offense.
The Bruins have made a habit of beating up on overachieving young teams lately, smothering an exuberant Ottawa unit 5-3 before throttling the Toronto Maple Leafs by a 7-0 mark in just over the past week.
Thursday night, the trend continued as they held off a first-period surge before dispatching the Edmonton Oilers with a strong second and third period to earn their fourth straight win and get back to .500 for the first time since October 8th, when they were 1-1.
Boston got off to another hot start headlined by Johnny Boychuk’s blast from the left point. Boychuk’s goal, the second of his season and the second from the same exact spot on TD Garden ice, had a bit of extra-special meaning for the North Edmonton native.
"It felt great (to score) obviously, growing up watching them," he said of the tally. "They were doing such a good job down low that before the goal that it opened up the top," giving him a chance to get the Bruins off to an early lead.
Zach Hamill’s solid execution led to Jordan Caron’s first goal of the season, but that tally was quickly countered by Ryan Smyth and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who scored 29 seconds apart to even things up after 20 minutes.
The second period belonged to Tyler Seguin, who drew a phantom hooking call on Jeff Petry as he tried to convert a breakaway chance. After Brad Marchand converted on the ensuing power play, fans got a glimpse of just how great Seguin’s vision is.
With a 2-on-2 rush developing too slowly for his liking, Seguin shot the puck into the boards behind Devan Dubnyk, hoping that the rebound would get to Marchand with room. But the rebound never made it there, instead hitting Dubnyk in the back of the right leg. When Tom Gilbert tried to clear the puck out of the crease, it went right to Seguin’s stick and 2010’s second overall draft pick didn’t take any chances with his second opportunity, neatly rifling it into the back of the net.
After a questionable high-sticking call went against Bergeron after the halfway mark of the third period, Smyth connected on his second of the night after Edmonton’s power play kept the Bruins killing unit on the ice for all 113 seconds of the penalty, but the Bruins got a power play coming back and Milan Lucic made good on the opportunity, knocking in a laser of a pass from Joe Corvo just seconds into the man-advantage.
Just 44 seconds later, Marchand struck again, sniping the top corner and icing the game away for Boston, which won its fourth in a row.
Boston, which had scored 22 goals in its first ten games, has now scored 24 in its last four, while allowing just 8. Those are numbers that any coach would take.
The win slowed another hot streak, which the Bruins have gotten good at doing lately. In fact, the combined records of the four teams that they’ve beaten during their current win streak in those teams’ last ten games is 24-11-5 (20-7-3 if you throw out the Islanders).