Morning Skate: Travellin’ band

Monday is upon us! Welcome to a new week, folks.

The Bruins aren’t back in game action until tomorrow night in Chicago, as they’re hitting the road again after a brief (but successful) homestand — five points out of six ain’t bad.

After tomorrow night’s game in Chicago, the Bruins will play at Minnesota and at Winnipeg before visiting Montreal a week from today.

The next week or so will be big for a number of reasons:

• The NHL trade deadline is a week from today.
• Tampa is coming to town after this road swing ends.

The former is pretty obvious, but the latter has become a lot more interesting due to the Bruins’ recent run of form.

Tampa’s always a good measuring stick game, but as of Sunday night, the Bruins had closed the gap on Tampa to three points (with Toronto in between and Tampa having a game in hand).

Considering where things stood back in, say, January, it’s remarkable to think that if this road trip goes well, the Bruins could have a chance to leapfrog Tampa in that March 24 game.

Of course, leapfrogging a team in the standings in late March isn’t an ironclad guarantee of playoff positioning, but it’d be a pretty impressive accomplishment for a Bruins team that, at times this season, looked adrift.

Still, plenty to happen in between then and now. That’s the fun of it!

Today’s discussion topic

Catch any of the Sabres-Leafs outdoor game yesterday? Any thoughts on it, or are you sick of outdoor games at this point?