B's Look to Close Gap in the Atlantic

As the Bruins look to continue and climb the standings, only one team stands between them an the top spot in the Eastern Conference. That team is the Tampa Bay Lightning, the B's opponent on Saturday night.
"Like we've done all year we're going to hit it head on and embrace that challenge," said forward David Backes. "We have good players on this team too…our top six, top nine, its formidable and we need to act like that and go out there and play our game, it doesn't matter who you're playing."

As the postseason nears, the Bruins will emphasize the importance of these final regular season games.
"You obviously want to be peaking maybe in the next five to 10 games going into playoffs," said Backes. "We need to be starting to play our best hockey, finding our puck management, the way that every play matters in the playoffs and could be the difference. No better time to start than a potential playoff matchup at some time with us and the Lightning tonight."
A win for the Bruins Saturday would close the gap between the B's and lightning to two points with 12 games to play.
"It's huge," said forward Brian Gionta. "These are big games. We want to keep calm and keep getting up there and for sure tonight is a big game for us."

Backes To The Top

The Bruins will make a change to their lineup entering the matchup with Tampa, as Backes and Riley Nash will trade places. Backes will move up to the top trio while Nash drops into the third line center role.
"Backes is fresh right now," said Cassidy about his reasoning for the change. "I think Riley [Nash] has played a lot of hockey so he'll maybe get Backes a little motivated to be up there. Give [Backes] some time, they'll probably see the top line, so see how he responds to that. Just a small tweak maybe gets David a few more looks offensively as well."
Backes' new linemate Brad Marchand is known for his vocal nature on the ice. Backes emphasized that with the increased importance of late season games, their focus will shift more towards the play on the ice.
"I think we might just shut our yaps tonight and play some hockey," said Backes. "That was kind of the message - he was talking, getting a little riled up in the Carolina game and I said, you just go dare them to try to play hockey against you because they can't.
"I think he was quite a force in the third period against Carolina and if we stay focused on playing the game, get in the other teams head, make them start trash talking, might be a newfound way to focus our energies on getting the job done on the ice rather than worrying about the extracurriculars. Especially this time of year when that's all that matters is the two points at the end of the night."

Face-Off Focus

One area the B's will look to stand out is at the face-off dot.
"Tampa, they don't have very many weaknesses," said head coach Bruce Cassidy. "If there's one you can sort of nitpick at, maybe it's the faceoff dot. It's somewhere we can start."
The B's struggled in the circle recently againt Florida, winning 47% of the draws.
"Without Bergy [Patrice Bergeron]," said Cassidy. "And then Backes gets tossed the other night, we had a tough time."
Backes emphasized that his success in the circle has been a result of getting more repetitions.
"I think just taking them," said Backes. "You can practice them in practice with a coach dropping pucks, but the timing… You have to take it with an NHL linesman in game and you start to learn your techniques that's working, what's not working.

"Some help from the wingers, some scrum draws, some that just hit the right thing in the dot and go behind you and you start possession. All those things start to build a little confidence, you start to find out what's working and go from there."

Projected Lineup

Marchand - Backes - Pastrnak
Heinen - Krejci - Rick Nash
Wingels - Riley Nash - Gionta
Schaller - Kuraly - Acciari
Krug - McQuaid
Grzelcyk - Miller
Holden - Carlo
Rask
Khudobin