Bruins embrace tough stretch to end regular season

SUNRISE, Fla. – Thirty-six hours before the puck dropped between the Boston Bruins and Florida Panthers on Tuesday, the Bruins were being skated into the ground. There were expletives from coach Jim Montgomery, and a bag skate and the understanding that this team had not come to practice on Monday with the right level of effort for a team with Stanley Cup Playoffs aspirations.

Not after two straight regulation losses. Not staring down a final 10-game schedule that is among the hardest remaining in the NHL. Not if they want to avoid last season’s fate, when they went in with great expectations and slunk out after a loss in the Eastern Conference First Round to these very Panthers.

After the game Tuesday, after a 4-3 comeback win that featured the game-tying and game-winning goals in the final 4:22 of the third period, the Bruins seemed to have a renewed focus, a renewed life, a renewed physicality that they’re hoping will carry them down the stretch and into the postseason.

So what did Montgomery think of the team’s resiliency against the Panthers?

“I loved it,” he said.

In the Bruins’ final 10-games, which started with their matchup against the Panthers at Amerant Bank Arena on Tuesday, only two are against teams not in the playoffs. They follow their game against Florida with the second half of their back to back against the Tampa Bay Lightning at Amalie Arena on Wednesday (7:30 p.m. ET; MAX, TNT, NESN, TVAS) with another chance to clinch a playoff berth.

They also have games against the Washington Capitals, Nashville Predators and Carolina Hurricanes, all on the road, the Panthers again, the Hurricanes again, the Pittsburgh Penguins and a back to back at the Capitals and a finale against the Ottawa Senators.

Whew.

“I think it just prepares us for what to expect, especially these last nine or 10 game and then, of course, playoffs,” goalie Jeremy Swayman said. “That was a really good team we just played and it gives us a boatload of confidence moving forward and what we need to do to prepare ourselves for what we’re going to see in playoffs.”

And that’s where the Bruins are focused. But not at the expense of these final games, games that the Bruins need to win -- for playoff positioning, for a chance to win the Presidents’ Trophy, for the ability to head into the postseason with a head of steam rather than by coasting to the finish, which they did last season, winning the Presidents’ Trophy with an NHL-record 135 points, 23 more than the Hurricanes.

“It’s never easy to play any team this time of year, but the teams that we do play, a lot of them are top of the League,” captain Brad Marchand said. “Or the few that aren’t are fighting for their lives. And that’s what you want. We want to be part of these games. It’ll get us prepared mentally, physically. It’ll help us fine-tune our game, making sure that we’re playing the right way coming into playoffs.

“When you sit on your lead in the standings and you get comfortable, that’s when you set yourself up for failure in playoffs. I love the fact that we have a lot of the top teams. It’s going to be competitive every single night. We’re going to have our mindset in the right place and be really detail-oriented structure-wise. It’s a great test for us going down the stretch. I think it’ll benefit us.”

Which was why this team so badly needed this win against the Panthers, needed to get back on the right foot. The win gave the Bruins a two-point lead on the Panthers in the Atlantic Division, though the Panthers have a game in hand.

“We played direct, we played hard and competed all the way through,” Marchand said. “And that’s what we need coming down the stretch and going into playoffs. I liked our response.”

And though the Bruins were far from perfect, not only giving up a goal 27 seconds into the game but allowing one 1:13 after they came back to tie the score in the second period, they bounced back. They stood up for one another.

Including 5-foot-9 Brad Marchand taking on 6-foot-5 Niko Mikkola.

Including Hampus Lindholm earning the first fighting major of his career, against Sam Bennett.

“Obviously a lot of emotion out there,” Lindholm said.

And Montgomery loved it.

“It might give us the confidence, like in three weeks when it starts for real, we’re down three times, keep coming back,” Montgomery said. “Just believe in our process, believe in our identity and keep playing.”

He saw the elements that he has been looking for, elements that will be necessary when the playoffs start. He saw the competing, the battling, the focus on the team. The ability to come back and to not crumble when the Panthers did the same.

“There was a lot of guys playing for each other today,” Zacha said. “Winning the battles, seeing guys fighting for each other. It was great. Seeing your captain going against someone like [Mikkola], it just always helps to see that everyone’s engaged and wants to win tonight.

“We won the battles. We have to keep playing like that more often.”

The Bruins were still down 3-2 in the third period, and it seemed possible that another game was going to slip away from them, as a number have since the All-Star Game. But Marchand made a play along the wall to get the puck to Trent Frederic for a power-play goal at 15:38 to tie it, getting Swayman the secondary assist and the first point of his career. And then David Pastrnak, who had earlier earned his 100th point of the season, tossed the puck to Zacha with 2:21 remaining, the puck ticking off his skate and past Sergei Bobrovsky.

They would not give up this lead.

“It’s good that we play teams like that, playoff teams,” Zacha said. “It’s good to get motivated against them and playing our game and just building what we have to do. It started today with a game like this. We just have to do the same tomorrow, again.”