McBride: Bruins are too talented to miss playoffs

On Tuesday's Toucher & Hardy program, Jim McBride explained why he thinks the Boston Bruins are too talented to miss the playoffs.

Parts of conversation abbreviated for clarity.

Jon Wallach: The Bruins just posted back-to-back shutouts over the weekend. However, I realize you are a cynical, hardened, battle-tested writer. You aren’t sold that this team has turned the corner? What is it going to take for you to feel that way? 

Jim McBride: Over the weekend, I thought the defense played well. They got great efforts from Swayman and Korpisalo. I thought it was big for Korpisalo to have that shutout. I think a lot of people looked at that as a throwaway game to put Korpisalo in the net for. He came up big in that game and it was on the heels of the 8-2 loss in Carolina, which was frankly embarrassing. So that was big. 

I think that they just need to keep going hard to the net. I sound like a coach when I say that. But when they do that, they have a lot of success and they get chances.  

And in Carolina, they were not going to the net, but they did the last two games. You know, they only scored four goals in total, but they had a lot more chances than they had in previous games.  

So, going hard to the net and being in front of the net is such a big thing. It's such a cliche, but it's so true. 

Fred Toucher: What do you think about this team? We've talked to about Montgomery and he seems to be like focused on the playoffs. Do you think this team is constructed for the playoffs? 

McBride: Yeah, I still think there's a lot of good pieces. They still have a lot of very good players—both the first and fourth lines. They've got great defense and they've got Jeremy Swayman. So that gives you a chance.  

They've got to find some secondary scoring from those second and third lines. I know a lot of people have been looking at Tyler Johnson to come in and provide a boost. But, I'm not even sure where he fits in the lineup right now. Maybe he will take Morgan Geekie’s spot for a little bit. Perhaps he will take Matt Poitras’ spot for a little bit.  

I think they have too much talent on this team to count them out. Recent results show that they're heading in the right direction.  

And they've got the Maple Leafs on Tuesday night. Which has always been a cure for what ails the Bruins. 

Ryan Beaton is a producer for 985thesportshub.com. You can follow Ryan at @ry_beaton on Twitter.

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It's not hard to figure out what the Bruins want to be in 2024-25.

With an offseason spending spree that saw the Bruins build an even bigger and more expensive defense corps, and have an even more expensive goaltending tandem than they did the year before, the Bruins were all in on building from the net out. Hell, include the club signing the best, high-end two-way center available in Elias Lindholm and that was a simple fact when it came to their vision for this season.

But wanting to be that and what the Bruins had actually put forth through their first 11 games of the season could not have been more different for Jim Montgomery's squad. Especially after an 8-2 pounding courtesy of the Hurricanes on Halloween night. It was getting a little scary out there.

Like a pillowcase full of raisins on Halloween night scary, actually.

But, as it weird as it may sound, it turns out that a weekend back-to-back (with travel) was the exact tonic the Bruins needed to get their game closer to what they want it to be, as the Bruins followed up a 3-0 shutout victory over the Flyers on Saturday with another shutout on Sunday, this time by a 2-0 final over the Kraken.

“We’re protecting the slot [and] we’re sacrificing for each other, which is the start," Montgomery said following his team's victory. "Our execution needs to continue to grow. Our maturity as a team as far as game management still needs to grow. But we’re winning games though now.”

Here are the 98.5 The Sports Hub (dot com) 3 Stars from another shutout win for the B's...

Bruins netminder Jeremy Swayman had a pretty relaxing start to this night, all things considered.

Spotted a 2-0 lead early, and with the Bruins outshooting the Kraken by a 14-0 edge in the opening 15 minutes of the game, it was a whole lot of spectating out of the gate for Boston's franchise goaltender. In fact, Swayman had to face just three shots through the opening 20 minutes of action, and had to make another seven saves in the middle stanza, giving him a solid 10-for-10 line. Light work. Dude could probably play some iPhone games in the blue.

But when the Kraken turned the heat up in the third period with 13 shots (and absolute chaos in front of the Boston net early and often), the 25-year-old Swayman remained strong and refused to break, and turned his first shutout win of the season by way of a 23-for-23 effort.

Having this kind of bounce-back performance after getting an early hook in Carolina — even if it was more about the team in front of him than Swayman himself — was absolutely key for both Swayman and the Bruins given the outside noise that's surrounded both his game and the B's team game through the first month of the campaign.

When it came to the struggles of Boston's middle-six forward grouping, almost nobody was blameless. It was a largely punchless, ineffective start for that group. So much so that the Bruins actually, in theory, dropped Charlie Coyle out of it and into a fourth-line role Thursday vs. Carolina. Now, Coyle was not deployed as a fourth-line player in that game, but it did feel like a message sent to the 6-foot-3 two-way threat all the same.

On Sunday night, Coyle definitely answered, with an absolutely disgusting power-play goal to put the Bruins up by two and a strong all-around game that left his coach pleased with his performance.

I just think the last two nights, Coyle’s been moving his feet and when he moves his feet, he creates turnovers, he takes pucks to the net," Montgomery said following the win. "Like that play in a penalty kill where he ended up on a partial breakaway. He went through two people, and it was like he had a silverback gorilla on his back, and he just kept going. That’s the effort and the kind of persistence that we want in our group.”

Like many of his teammates, Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy had some soul searching to do after the club's most recent slide.

And for Boston's top defenseman, it came back to a simple message: The crest on your chest is more important than anything else. Not producing offensively? Doesn't matter. It's about the team and doing whatever you can to help the team win that game. And for McAvoy, a focus on the latter often leads to individual results, as it did on Sunday night, with McAvoy absolutely turning in his best performance of the season in the victory.

After the game, Montgomery noted that it was the best that McAvoy's looked all season. And it was definitely the best and most comfortable he's looked offensively this year, with seven shots on goal and the quick-thinking that led to countless chances and opportunities for his club. For McAvoy, simply getting the puck towards the net has often best his best play, for both himself and his team.

In addition to the offensive contributions, McAvoy also had a late-game block that helped preserve Swayman's shutout, and finished Sunday's win with three blocks by the night's end.