Sure, the Bruins have a three games to two lead in their best-of-seven Eastern Conference Semifinals series against the Canadiens - with Game 6 on tap for Monday night at the Bell Centre in Montreal - but the President's Trophy winners haven't made it easy on themselves.
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| Julien's quiet confidence has Bruins on brink of eliminating the Habs |
Eighteen times the Bruins have given the Canadiens the man advantage in five games, yielding seven power play goals in the process. The good news for Bruins' fans is that, just as in the quarterfinals series against the Detroit Red Wings, the Canadiens are having trouble finding the dirty ice at even strength, scoring a total of six goals with all things equal...
...one of those being defenseman P.K. Subban's breakway goal coming out of the penalty box uncovered, meaning that only five of the Habs' 13 tallies have been straight up.
By comparison, 13 of Boston's 15 goals in this series have come five-on-five - finding twine on just two of their twelve power play opportunities.
Any better outcome on either the penalty kill or the power play, and this series would already be over.
Montreal has gone two games since scoring an even strength goal against Boston, an impressive stretch for the Bruins that has seen them completely shut the door on the Canadiens' offense, save a power play goal and an extra-attacker tally in Game 5 - in fact, since the Habs scored on a Dale Weise drive midway through the second period of Game 3, Montreal hasn't gotten one past Bruins' goalie Tuukka Rask at even strength.
"We're playing against a very good team; if you look at the stats it's one of the best teams at 5-on-5," said top line forward David Desharnais "It's tough, but we have to find a way. If we get some power plays we need to take advantage of that and create some momentum to score 5-on-5."
That said, there seems to be one sure-fire way to beat the Canadiens on Monday night and advance to the Eastern Conference Finals for the second year in a row: Keep everything equal.
Bruins' Projected Lineup
Forwards
Milan Lucic - David Krejci - Jarome Iginla
Brad Marchand - Patrice Bergeron - Reilly Smith
Matt Fraser - Carl Soderberg - Loui Eriksson
Daniel Paille - Gregory Campbell - Shawn Thornton
Defensive pairings
Zdeno Chara - Dougie Hamilton
Matt Bartkowski - Johnny Boychuk
Torey Krug - Kevan Miller
Goaltenders
Tuukka Rask
Chad Johnson
Chad Johnson
Surprisingly - perhaps stupidly - Desharnais says that he feels like the series momentum has started to swing into the favor of the Habs, even going so far as to call out Bruins' captain Zdeno Chara in an effort to give hope to his teammates and their fan base...
...and perhaps taking his turn to "poke the bear", as it were, trying to cause the Bruins' to lose focus - though his words have probably done nothing except make the feared defenseman's resolve a little stronger.
"He's an excellent defenseman; it's definitely not easy to play against him," Desharnais said, managing to sound magnanimous before delivering the punch line. "I think [Saturday] we found a way to get him tired a bit more and to pressure him."
"When you do that, he's just another defenseman."
Mother of God, what have you done?
Perhaps Desharnais is feeling a bit of detachment from the game after such a long season and a tough series against the Bruins, and if he didn't awaken the bear inside of each of the Bruins with his previous statement, he certainly did when trying to justify it.
"The longer the series goes the more we feel they're slowing down a little bit," he said. "It's tough on them, we're pressuring them. It's getting tougher and tougher, but we're getting our chances."
Canadiens' Projected Lineup
Forwards
Max Pacioretty - David Desharnais - Brendan Gallgher
Michael Bournival -Tomas Plekanec - Tomas Vanek
Rene Bourque - Lars Eller -Brian Gionta
Travis Moen - Danny Briere - Dale Weise
Defensive pairings
Josh Gorges - P.K. Subban
Andrei Markov - Alexei Emelin
Douglas Murray - Mike Weaver
Goaltenders
Carey Price
Peter Budaj
For his part, Montreal coach Michel Therrien seems to be out of ammo to motivate his troops - perhaps part of the reason that Desharnais is now trying to dislodge both of his skates from his mouth. Therrien called out his top line before Game 5 on Saturday, saying that he felt they hadn't adjusted to intensity level that is required for the playoffs - but on Sunday afternoon he sounded resigned to just let things unfold as they should.
"Leadership comes from everyone, it doesn't come from one player," Therrien said when given the opportunity to single out his top line again. "I ask any player that puts on the uniform, every player that shows up to a game, they have to show leadership. Whether it's your first season or you've been in the League for 18 years, in my eyes you need to act like a leader."
Therrien's top line isn't the only line struggling in this series, as the Bruins "KIL" line of David Krejci, Jarome Iginla and Milan Lucic have had a rough go of it since the post-season began, as both the Red Wings and Canadiens have seemed to focus on trying to be physical with them, but it appears that the line is emerging from their collective funk as Lucic is hitting everything that moves and Iginla scored a slump-busting game winner in Game 4.
"I noticed that he was a whole different animal, and he was putting fear into their D," said defenseman Matt Bartkowski of Lucic "that's what he does."
"They started doing the right things," Bruins' coach Claude Julien said in response to questions regarding his top line. "We’ve seen them enough all year that when they play a straight line game and they play within their strength which is being big, strong and managing the puck well and hanging on to it in the offensive zone, that is when they become good."
"Although it wasn’t a five-on-five goal, it was nice to see Iggy score [Saturday] again and that line, you can see, is starting to turn the corner."
Lost in all of the hype and hoopla surrounding this rivalry is the calmness and confident demeanor of Julien - where the most controversial statement he's made to the media is that if his Bruins' play their game, they'll be fine.
Quiet arrogance? Perhaps in the Canadiens' world it is seen as such, but in reality all Julien is doing is telling the truth - and if the Bruins do indeed play their game on Monday night, chances are very good that Game 6 will signal the end of Montreal's season.
"You know, I think we played a pretty complete game (in Game 5 on Saturday)," Bartkowski continued. "And I said that before the game, if we play a full 60 minutes and we don't really give them much - if we do that, we're fine."
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