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Preview: The Lightning come to town

Bruins look to stomp Tampa’s hopes of revenge

By ShawnFerris
NHL: Boston Bruins at Tampa Bay Lightning Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Just the facts

When: 7:00 P.M.

Where: TD Garden

How to follow: NESN, NHL Network, 98.5 The Sports Hub

Rival SBN site: Raw Charge

Know your enemy

  • 42-20-5, 89 points, 2nd in the Atlantic Division
  • Goals: Nikita Kucherov, 32
  • Assists: Kucherov, 50
  • Points: Kucherov, 82
  • Goalie: Andrei Vasilevskiy, 34-13-3, 2.56 GAA, .916 save percentage

Game Notes

  • Heading into tonight’s affair, the Bruins currently have higher than an 80% chance of winning the President’s Trophy, according to HockeyViz.com. While the odds of it happening are low, Tampa is a challenger if the Bruins were to fall off of a cliff for the remainder of the season. This is a nontrivial game in that regard.
  • Not to underscore Brandon Carlo’s impact, but the Bruins used Zdeno Chara and Charlie McAvoy far more extensively in defensive situations in the last game between these two teams. They started more shifts in the defensive zone and played about 5 more minutes at even strength than Carlo.
  • Speaking of which, the 2-1 scoreline on Tuesday night was very conservative. The Bruins outshot and outchanced the Lightning by quite a big margin. Looking at even strength shots courtesy of Evolving Hockey, the Bruins kept the Lighting to the outside in the defensive zone while also taking shots in close in the offensive zone.
  • Since that 2-1 loss to the Bruins, the Lightning beat Montreal by a 4-0 score. They should be in a better frame of mind heading into tonight’s game, and it’ll be interesting to see if there’s any carryover animosity tonight.
  • Bruce Cassidy elected to do more lineup shuffling on Thursday night, even though things went pretty well against Tampa on Tuesday. Chances are, he’ll make another minor tweak again tonight.
  • A win tonight for the Bruins would give them 100 points in 69 games (nice). A regulation win would put the Bruins 11 points up on Tampa with just 14 games left for the Bolts. It’s not an insurmountable margin, but is pretty close.