by Bob Morello
Bruins welcome home cooking
Tonight (Thursday) the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs will move onto TD Garden ice for games three and four. For Boston, their regular season record on home ice was an impressive 29-11-1, but they struggled on the road, only able to manage a .500 record of 16-16-9. If the Bruins are to make a defining push, it could start with tonight’s game, where they hope to perform in the two playoff games on home ice, with the same drive and confidence they showed in the regular season home games. It’s never easy to put the memories in the rearview mirror of a heartbreaking game, the kind the locals suffered in Game One of this series, but they had the chance to show some resilience, thanks to the every-other-day playoff schedule. Despite their inability to create shots in quantity, a problem that was very evident in the last half dozen games prior to the start of the playoffs, the hope is that the comfort of home (and family) could be just the relaxant they are seeking to hit that stride of success once again. One factor could be that now with a couple of postseason playoff games on their resume, the five Bruins players who appeared in their initial postseason last Sunday’s game, have shed all signs of nerves. The five players, James Hagens, Fraser Minten, Marat Khusnutdinov, (the former three on the same line to start the game), plus Mark Kastelic, and Jonathan Aspirot, did not appear out of place in the 4-3 loss to the Buffalo Sabres. The Bruins showed strong control right out of the gate to start this seven-game series, before running out of gas late in the third period of Game One. Any team that had such a successful regular season record as Buffalo (50-23-9), was going to be tough in the playoffs at some point…as the Bruins found out, with the Sabres’ first-place finish in the Atlantic Division, and second place in the Eastern Conference, gave everyone notice, that Buffalo’s 15-year stretch of DNQ’s (Did Not Qualify) was now going to be history. The remedy for Boston to move into a good position in this series is right before their very eyes… tighten up the defense issues, manage the puck better, and bring up the shots totals, and most important, cover Buffalo’s high-scoring Tage Thompson better, and they may find better success, and an advantageous position in the Round One playoffs.