OTTAWA – Joonas Korpisalo will get the start in goal on Thursday night when the Bruins visit the Senators at Canadian Tire Centre in search of their eighth straight victory. Boston has not lost since its lopsided 7-2 setback to the Sens in this building on Oct. 27.
“That stretch we had wasn’t fun,” said former Senators forward Mark Kastelic. “You could see signs of the positives that we had, but then when we came here, we definitely got it taken to us and none of us liked that, for sure.
“Maybe that was the turning point, but I think we were just trying to take the positives from the previous games and just use it as motivation, that one game, just to get back on the right track. I think we’ve done that so far. This time around, hopefully change the narrative a bit.”
Coach Marco Sturm noted that the Bruins were able to use that loss, and that span in which they dropped seven of eight, as a crucial teaching tool.
“Those games, those stretches kind of help you,” said Sturm. “They’re not pretty but that kind of helped us to get out of it a little bit. It showed us that we can’t play that way. It was just the start of something good. We definitely don’t want to repeat that tonight.”
Boston did get some level of payback when the teams met again one week ago at TD Garden with the Bruins pulling out a 3-2 win over Ottawa courtesy of Pavel Zacha’s overtime tally.
“It already started when they came to our building. We wanted to show them right away, this is not the team that we are, playing here and losing, 7-2,” said Sturm. “I think we did a good job in our building. Now, we have to try to do the same thing tonight.”
The Bruins enter Thursday night’s contest tied with Montreal for the Atlantic Division lead with 22 points apiece.
“I feel like we’re a much different team now than when we came here eight games ago,” said Kastelic. “Every day is a new game. We’re going to try to take that approach.”
