Bruins Close Out Historic Regular Season with Win in Montreal

MONTREAL - A record regular-season is now a wrap.
The Bruins closed out their historic 2022-23 campaign on Thursday night with a 5-4 comeback victory over the Montreal Canadiens at Bell Centre to finish the season with an NHL all-time best 65 wins and 135 points. It also marked Boston's 31st road win of the season, tying the 2005-06 Detroit Red Wings for the most in a single season in NHL history.

"There's numerous statistical metric you can look at that make the season special, but for me it's how much those guys care about playing for each other. That's what was special," said coach Jim Montgomery, whose club won eight straight games to end the year and set an NHL record for most winning streaks of seven-plus games in a single season (five).
"I think we appreciate what we've accomplished. The beauty of sports is you have to have a short memory because two days later, the next day, we've got to move on. Three days from now, we start from Game 1 and that's all our focus is now."
Boston's opponent in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs will be the Florida Panthers, who were the only team in the league to beat the Bruins twice this season. The clubs have only met in the postseason once before - in the 1996 conference quarterfinals, which Florida won in five games.
"They're a really good team, a dangerous team," said Montgomery. "We're going to have to be at the top of our game if we want to have success...[Matthew] Tkachuk, excellent player. [Aleksander] Barkov's a stud. That's two players on the top of my mind right now. Besides that, they're a really fast team that transitions well."

Bergeron Leaves Early

Patrice Bergeron left the game following the first period with an upper-body injury and did not return. The team termed it precautionary.
"37's fine. He wanted to go back out. I said no," said Montgomery.

B's Rally in the Third

After falling behind, 4-3, on Justin Barron's shorthanded goal just 1:09 into the third period, the Bruins responded with two unanswered tallies for the win. Charlie Coyle tied things up with a nifty dangle at 8:48 of the final frame, before David Pastrnak struck for his 61st of the season just 2:12 later to put Boston ahead, 5-4. It was the B's 24th comeback win of the year, tying a club record (2017-18).
"The little stuff can help give some confidence, scoring touch," said Coyle, who finished the season with 16 goals. "But we were just happy to win that and go [into the playoffs] on a winning note, I guess. We've been playing some pretty good hockey lately. Last game of the year, you never know how it's gonna go when it doesn't really mean much.
"But it did mean a lot to us because we wanted to go in on a winning note and make sure we were playing the right way and creating those good habits. We don't want to sink back and have bad habits come in. We wanted to make sure we got the job done and play the right way for the most part."
Pastrnak, meanwhile, fell one goal shy of Jaromir Jagr's single-season record for goals among Czech-born players (62).
"I learned that today to be honest. I had no clue," said Pastrnak. "My thoughts are totally somewhere else than 60 goals right now. I had my fun when I scored it, I enjoyed it, I must say, with the guys. They were amazing. My thoughts are totally somewhere else now."
Pastrnak finished the season with 113 points, the 15th-highest total in Bruins history and most since Adam Oates in 1992-93 (145). He also closed out the year with a 10-game point streak (11-6-17), his second such streak of the season to join Connor McDAvid (five), Leon Draisaitl (three), Steven Stamkos (two), Nikita Kucherov (two), Aleksander Barkov (two), and Mitch Marner (two) as the only players to record multiple 10-game point streaks this season.

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