Tampa Bay Lightning vs Boston Bruins April 25, 2013

Tweet

As is pretty much standard operating procedure after the Boston Bruins take a big loss, they took yesterday off altogether (now, whether that’s the best course of action or not is debatable) and are back in action today for tonight’s game against the Tampa Bay Lighting. This is the game, by the way, that was rescheduled from the beginning of February, when a huge blizzard necessitated a redo because the city was pretty much paralyzed. It’s also one of three upcoming games for Boston as they close out the regular season, including another reschedule.


Tampa Bay may be out of the playoffs once again this year, but they’re still shaking things up and making headlines. Steven Stamkos is not far at all from the lead in the Rocket Richard goal-scoring race. Last night, Marty St. Louis just took over the lead in NHL scoring and is now at 58 points, proving that short folks can do big things.


The Bruins may be in some strange headspace right now, thinking about all the things that went wrong in their most recent 5-2 loss while also trying to move past it and focus on tonight’s game. But really, the way they performed in that game was just so bad in so many ways that they kind of deserve to be in a tough place mentally.


Of the Bruins at today’s notably longer morning skate, Nathan Horton did skate, but remains day-to-day and won’t play tonight. It’s also hard to predict what might be done for defensive pairings since now there are just so many defensemen and that ongoing mission to let some of them rest before the playoffs. A popular sentiment in the midst of that terrible game was to let Zdeno Chara take a night off because, to use a sports cliche, his head was not in the game. Plus, it’s so close to playoffs and this game means little beyond the potential acquisition of two points–it won’t, say, decide whether or not Boston gets into the dance at all–but the project d-pairs have Chara right in the lineup, so who even knows.
The huge show of support from all over the league for Boston’s relief efforts continues. The blue and yellow awareness ribbon stickers will adorn the helmets of Lightning players tonight. Then, in an interesting turn from how jerseys are usually the ones auctioned off, the helmets themselves will go up on the block with all proceeds off to One Fund. That’s a neat twist.