Bruins breathe easy, at least momentarily, before facing Senators

BOSTON -- The middle knuckle of Bruce Cassidy's hand had blood smeared on it, as the Boston Bruins coach sat down at the podium to address the media following his team's 6-3 win against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday.

It made sense, though. It was just that kind of game.
And it was one that the Bruins needed after three consecutive losses, including a lost road trip through Florida and Tampa this week.
This win came in the form of an impressive offensive output, with goals from six different scorers, not usually the style for a team that has been far too top heavy this season, and last for that matter.
Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson scored. David Backes scored. Torey Krug. Danton Heinen. David Krejci. Ryan Donato.

It gives hope to a team that seemed a bit impotent of late, especially since the loss of center Patrice Bergeron to rib and sternoclavicular injuries on Nov. 16. Including that game, the Bruins scored 16 goals in 10 games.
And then, on Saturday, six goals.
Relief.
"For the most part," Cassidy said, "It was one of our more complete games."
Perhaps it was even more impressive given that Cassidy opted to load up on his first line yet received production throughout the entire lineup. Krejci was the center on a line with Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak from the start, something that Cassidy has done here and there within games, but which he generally resisted in Bergeron's absence.
He loaded up, though, and the whole team responded.
"It's important," said Krug, who scored his first goal of the season. "It's been the same old story for a long time that certain guys are carrying the weight offensively and carrying the team, so to get it from other guys is nice to see."
Not just nice. Crucial.
"You have to win by committee," Marchand said. "That's what we did."
The Bruins had been frustrated by their play, by their inability to convert chances into goals, to convert solid periods into wins, to tease out much secondary scoring. That was not the case on Saturday.
"We've been playing pretty good hockey and we've been getting a lot of opportunities, just a lot of posts and we're just an inch to the left, inch to the right," Marchand said. "It just kind of seemed like everything was bouncing our way last year and early on here we haven't had the best of puck luck. This is sometimes what you need to find that offensive game."
They haven't had puck luck, or much of any luck really.
The Bruins continue to be without Bergeron, and injured defensemen Zdeno Chara and Kevan Miller. Forward Jake DeBrusk was ruled out for the weekend's games with an upper-body injury. And that's not even counting the wide swaths of the season in which the Bruins were missing defensemen Charlie McAvoy, Krug, Brandon Carlo, and Urho Vaakanainen.
They're still far from fully healthy, and far from fully themselves.
But for one night -- one night that could possibly have reverberations this week and this month -- they looked like a far more complete team.

"We had a great effort by everyone," said Krejci, who passed Cam Neely for 10th on the Bruins all-time scoring list with his goal and an assist. "Obviously, we knew we had a tough road trip in Florida, lose back-to-back games, it's never fun. But I thought we responded really well. We talked about lots of things [Saturday] morning and played the way we drew it up."
Still, it wasn't perfect.
The good feelings were tempered at 10:07 of the third period, when a hit by Zach Hyman on McAvoy, in his second game back from a concussion, left the defenseman heading down the tunnel and into the dressing room.
McAvoy returned for the final minutes of the game, sitting on the bench next to goalie Tuukka Rask, and stepped back onto the ice only after the buzzer. He went through the League-mandated concussion protocols, a sobering situation given that McAvoy just missed a quarter of the season, 20 games, with a concussion.
"I thought it was late. I thought it was unnecessary," Cassidy said of the hit. "It annoys you. Especially when it's Charlie, who's just come back. You wonder: Are they targeting him or not? You don't know that. I'd like to think it was just a guy playing hard and got there late and didn't pull up."
The rest of the period turned chippy, combative. Tempers flared.
But by the end of the game, the Bruins were able to celebrate. They were able to breathe, as they headed to Ottawa for a game against the Senators in the second half of a back-to-back on Sunday (5 p.m. ET; RDS2, TSN5, NESN, NHL.TV).
It could have been a sobering flight, with continuing concerns about how the Bruins will ride out the remainder of their time without Bergeron and Chara. Instead, the Bruins moved ahead of the Montreal Canadiens in the standings. They captured a well-deserved two points and denied two points to a formidable foe that happens to be the second-place team in their division. They had proven that they are capable of not only riding their first line.
The Bruins could, for the moment, rest easy.