A fellow Eastern Conference playoff competitor stands in between the Boston Bruins and their quest to sweep an all-important back-to-back weekend slate of games.
Fresh off a 3-1 Saturday win over the Washington Capitals, the Bruins will hit the road to meet the Pittsburgh Penguins for the second time in five days on Sunday. The game marks another chance for Boston to break its recent road woes, having lost six straight (0-3-3) away from TD Garden, where it is on a 12-game win streak.
“I think it all goes back to the way we play, and for some reason we just play smarter at home. We have no panic, no chaos, nothing,” Bruins coach Marco Sturm said. “And on the road, we try really hard. Maybe that’s a problem. Maybe we want to overdo things and get in trouble.”
Sturm’s club will have to turn around that trend coming down the stretch of the regular season, with five of their eight games over an upcoming 14-day stretch coming on the road. However, Boston can carry momentum from a 2-1 Tuesday win over Pittsburgh, which entered that game on a five-game point streak (3-0-2) but is 0-2-1 over the past three games.
The Bruins still hold the East’s final wild-card playoff spot by two points over the Columbus Blue Jackets, but pushed Washington to six points back on Saturday with their win over the Capitals.
Boston’s Viktor Arvidsson scored the eventual game-winning goal — his sixth in the past eight games — early in the third, breaking a 1-1 tie.
“It’s an important time of year, and I think we are really rallying around that,” said Boston goaltender Jeremy Swayman, who made 22 stops against the Capitals after a 34-save performance to beat the Penguins.
Star Bruins winger David Pastrnak also is coming off a bounce-back game, dishing out two assists after falling into a three-game point drought.
Also playing in the second game of a back-to-back, the Penguins are looking to turn around their recent fate after dropping a 4-3 shootout decision to the Philadelphia Flyers. In the two previous games, Pittsburgh scored a total of two goals and have dropped three games in a row.
The Penguins sit in third place in the Metropolitan division.
“I don’t really think that we’ve played up to the level that we had coming off the (Olympic) break,” defenseman Erik Karlsson said. “We had a couple of down games here in a row now, and it’s unfortunate timing. But I think we know what we are in here.”
On top of the recent scoring dip, Pittsburgh fell to 1-9 in shootouts this season.
“Anytime a part of your game’s not going well consistently, then there’s conversations about it, and then there’s buzz about it, and then it wears on you,” Penguins coach Dan Muse said.
Sunday will mark the Penguins’ second straight game without injured captain Sidney Crosby and longtime teammate Evgeni Malkin, who was handed a five-game suspension from NHL Player Safety after slashing Buffalo Sabres defenseman Rasmus Dahlin on Thursday.
“Obviously missing two absolutely incredible players, so that doesn’t help,” forward Bryan Rust said. “But we have very capable guys in here, guys that need to and that will and can and that have stepped up for us. And we’ve got to just continue to do that.”
Without the team-leading duo (106 combined points), Rust skated alongside Egor Chinakhov and Rickard Rakell on the top line. Rakell had a goal and an assist against the Flyers. Chinakhov dished out a pair of assists, giving him points in six of his past nine games.
