Bruins' NHL record-tying home start part of 'special' season

BOSTON -- It's six weeks into Jim Montgomery's tenure as Boston Bruins coach, six weeks into the NHL season, and he has yet to experience a loss at TD Garden, yet to see a crowd file out disappointed, yet to exit without "Dirty Water" pouring out of the arena's sound system.

"It's unfathomable that we were gonna have this start, right?" Montgomery said.
And yet, here they are.
The Bruins have won 11 straight at TD Garden to open the season, tying the NHL record on Saturday when they beat the Chicago Blackhawks, 6-1. The two previous teams to accomplish the feat were the Blackhawks in 1963-64 and the Florida Panthers last season.
The Bruins will get a chance to set the record when they face the Carolina Hurricanes on Friday, a game against the team that knocked them out of the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs in the Eastern Conference First Round in seven games.
So, yes, heading into the traditional marker of U.S. Thanksgiving, the Bruins still have an unblemished home record, a head of steam and a team that is worthy of the word that keeps being bandied about in Boston these days: special.
"It says something about this group, that we're building something special here," forward Nick Foligno said, after their 10th straight home win, on Thursday.
Of course, the Bruins were supposed to start slow. This was supposed to be a team that was going to struggle until the return of some big names -- defensemen Charlie McAvoy and Matt Grzelcyk and forward Brad Marchand -- after offseason surgeries.
This was a team transitioning from the success of the Bruce Cassidy regime -- he was fired June 7 after six seasons -- and replaced by Montgomery, necessitating a learning process and an alteration of the systems that had brought the Bruins to the Stanley Cup Playoffs every season and the Stanley Cup Final in 2019, where they lost in seven games to the St. Louis Blues.

Instead, that transition has been seamless, the three players all came back early, and the Bruins have somehow emerged as arguably the best team in hockey.
"We're having a heck of a lot of fun," McAvoy said. "You can just see how close everyone is in this room, how everyone plays for each other. … We're relying on each other. We're having fun doing it. It's a great attitude and feeling and vibe in the room right now. We've just got to ride these waves."
Not many players have experienced playing on a team this dominant for this long, a team that seemingly isn't interested in losing. Foligno has, playing in the second-longest winning streak in NHL history (16 games with the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2016-17) and starting the season 13-1-0 with the Ottawa Senators in 2007-08, his rookie season.
"But this feels different, I'll say that," Foligno said. "The depth. The focus. We're a confident but not cocky group. I think sometimes your habits really slip when you go through that. I know in Columbus, it kind of did. We were just winning and some games we didn't deserve to win, but we were on a roll, and we were feeling good, you just catch lightning in a bottle. Here, it's a little different."
It's different players coming up big. It's different ways of winning each game. It's a different attitude.
"There's an expectation to win, but there's an understanding of how we're going to do that," Foligno said. "No one's cheating it."
And Saturday might have marked their best game of the season, a clinical takedown of the Blackhawks that saw the Bruins outshooting Chicago by a 30-8 margin after the second period and a 43-18 margin by the final buzzer, a game that Montgomery called "pretty dominant."

But while the game Saturday was a master class, it's the season that demonstrates what this Bruins team is and what it could become.
They have six straight wins and are 16-2-0, their only losses coming at the Ottawa Senators on Oct. 18 and at the Toronto Maple Leafs on Nov. 5.
Defenseman Brandon Carlo is the sole regular not to have scored a goal this season. The Bruins are getting a resurgent season from Foligno, following up a 13-point campaign last season with 10 points (three goals, seven assists) in 18 games. Tomas Nosek has a five-game point streak and goalie Linus Ullmark could contend for the Vezina Trophy.
None of that could have been anticipated. But they'll take it.
"We're trying to focus on what brings us the success that we're having right now, be in the moment," said captain Patrice Bergeron, who recorded his 998th and 999th NHL points Saturday, and is one point from becoming the fourth Bruins player to score 1,000 after Ray Bourque (1,506), Johnny Bucyk (1,339) and Phil Esposito (1,012).
"Obviously it's a special group and we have to be thankful for that. That being said, everyone's enjoying themselves. We have to take it a day at a time. That's what we've been doing so far."
That was the hope when Bergeron decided to return instead of retiring, when forward David Krejci joined him, coming back from his season spent in his native Czech Republic. The hope was that this team could be good enough to contend, good enough to give the 2011 champions another shot at another Stanley Cup.
No one could have predicted this.
But, they all said, they're still not satisfied. Eleven straight wins at home, and no one in the Bruins dressing room at TD Garden was ready to end that streak any time soon.
"That's what I've noticed: Even though we've had success, there's such an honesty here," Foligno said. "Such a thirst to get better. A hunger to become more elite. And that's pretty scary. It's not like we're just happy with where we're at. We know there's other levels that we're going to get to.
"We're really excited about that. Because our best hockey is yet to come."