On the Bruins Turning Things Around

I hope they have. I like to convince myself of things, but it's too soon to know, so we have to sit patiently and wait for when they play again. Suddenly 2 days seems like a long time. So I will spend some of  it trying to reassure the belief that the Bruins are heading into the final stretch o the regular sesaon and into the playoffs playing better and better hockey. Here is some 'evidence' to help.

Things were bad for a while, and remained that way longer than it should have, due to reasons like Gregory Campbell explains below:

When things are going bad, you can start to squeeze your stick. That’s a term in hockey when you’re frustrated or scoring is hard to come by, you’re uptight and you’re not allowing things to happen. Rather, you’re trying to force plays and force things to happen. I guess it’s just another word for being tense and uptight. When things are going well it just seems like there’s flow in your game and things just kind of work out. Squeezing your stick is something that might be relevant to our team now, but it certainly isn’t the solution. (Source)

After last night's win, Tim Thomas said:

I feel like something's turned...It's a good feeling. Even before the game tonight I felt that way. I could just feel it in the locker room. (Source)

If Tim Thomas says so, I have a lot of confidence about the truth of the statement, especially because weakness in defense and lack of confidence in goaltending was also a main contributing and maintaining factor of the losing streaks and awful play.

In the same article, Thomas is quoted as saying:

When you're feeling good and feeling confident, you're glad to be in that position...That's part of the reason I picked goaltending in the first place. It's an important position in the outcome of the game. That can be a blessing and a curse, depending on how things are going.

The above article also goes on to quote Shawn Thornton:

[Thomas is] human, right?..Everyone has ups and downs. It's on us to be better around him when he's having an off night. The problem was we were collectively having off nights together.

As usual, Shawn Thornton eloquently and accurately describes a complex problem in simple terms: "we were all collectively having off nights together".

Considering my belief of the Bruins as the ultimate team, it makes sense that they play well together as a team and awful together as a team. They're just that dedicated to and reliant on one another!

The following post will have some data to show another reason I think things are going to start looking up.