Boston Bruins favourite to beat Montreal Canadiens – NHL Preview
The defending Stanley Cup champions, Boston Bruins, are very much in the safe zone and can easily qualify for the playoffs, but keeping their recent form and the exploding run of a few other teams in the present National Hockey League (NHL) season in mind,
Bruins’ ability to defend the title could be questioned.
It’s time for Bruins to prove all the critics wrong and a game against Montreal Canadiens on Wednesday, February 15, 2012, at Bell Centre, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, can certainly provide them a good platform to assert their dominance.
Boston is currently placed at the second spot in the Eastern Conference with 70 points after 54 games.
The team was doing really well throughout the season, but its performance in last couple of months is far from satisfactory with the inconsistency remaining a big cause of worry.
It has been around a month since Boston won two straight games.
Also, the offence has struggled this month and the team has lost three games without even scoring a goal.
Boston’s recent loss came against the conference leaders, New York Rangers, who scored two goals in the first period, while one in the final to get the victory.
Bruins’ coach, Claude Julien, said after the loss:
“We're a checking team that scores, but right now, we're not checking and we're not scoring.”
He added:
“We've got to get back to get back to checking, and checking is playing a lot harder, winning battles, and being really hard to score against, and when you do that, then teams get frustrated like we did tonight, make a few mistakes, and it ends up in the
net. So they beat us at our own game."
Despite the slump, Boston has the ability to overcome Montreal, which got its four-game winning streak snapped against Carolina Hurricanes on Monday.
Montreal’s offence clicked in the second period and scored three goals, but Hurricanes’ one goal each in the first and second period and three in the final got them the victory.
Montreal is currently placed at 12th spot in the Eastern Conference with 55 points after 57 games.
Predictions:
Despite the recent on-and-off run, Bruins are still the favourites.
The sum of total goals scored by both the teams is expected to be more than six.
The winning margin could be two or more goals.
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