With their playoff spot clinched, the Boston Bruins have the luxury to rest certain players down the stretch to keep them fresh for the postseason. But will they?
With their playoff spot clinched, the Boston Bruins have the luxury to rest certain players down the stretch to keep them fresh for the postseason. But will they?
ARLINGTON, Va – With eight games left in the regular season, the Boston Bruins are locked into a Stanley Cup playoff spot. They’ve known they would make it for much longer, but now that it’s set in stone, Bruins coach Jim Montgomery can afford to cut back on minutes for some of the key older players to preserve energy for the postseason.
But will he? Based on what he said Friday, the answer is no. He doesn’t feel the need to.
“I don’t think we’re overly taxing anyone,” Montgomery said.
In terms of total time on ice so far this season, Charlie McAvoy (1,642:58) leads all Bruins players, but he’s 22nd amongst NHL defensemen. Hampus Lindholm (1,518:55) slots in at 46, and Brandon Carlo (1,381:39) is 71st.
Among forwards, David Pastrnak (1,479:31) is 10th league-wide and Brad Marchand (1,427:09) is 20th, but the next highest is Charlie Coyle, who is 46th at 1,343:28.
One would expect the 35-year-old Marchand to take some rest opportunities with only eight games left, ensuring he’s at full energy come playoff time. At the very least, only playing one leg of a back-to-back seems like a reasonable assumption. Guess again.
“If you can’t play back-to-backs, then you shouldn’t be in the league,” Marchand said on Friday. “You should be the best conditioned athletes in the world, so I don’t feel bad about that."
Just last year, the Bruins caught some flack when Patrice Bergeron suited up for the last game of the season against his 'hometown' Montreal Canadiens. The Quebec City native wanted to play in front of his family for what would be the last time, but he wound up herniating a disc in his back, which caused him to miss four games in Boston’s shocking first-round loss to the Florida Panthers.
Despite that memory, holding Marchand out is not in the cards. Montgomery said he approached Marchand about taking a night off here and there towards the end of last season, but he adamantly refused. The sentiment is no different this time around.
“It’s Marchand. He’s a special, special breed,” Montgomery said. “I mean, the guy competes, he leads. He’s our engine that makes us go. There’s gonna be times where we back off him and there’s times where I notice where I don’t think he has his normal pep.”
Montgomery added that the group has the advantage of having fewer games down the stretch with more off days in between. After Saturday’s matchup against the Washington Capitals, Boston will have just seven more games to play over the course of 17 days.
The ‘rest vs. rust’ debate stretches back far beyond these past two seasons, and while the Bruins experienced the negative side of things last year with Bergeron, Marchand has drawn his line in the sand, for better or worse.
“I just feel like the best way to prepare for playoff time down the stretch is to play," he said on Friday. "Especially with the schedule we have, we’re playing intense teams and teams that are playoff-ready, playoff-bound, and it’ll benefit us to play. So I’ve never been a big fan of sitting out. I think it’s just that competitive nature that you want to be out there with the guys.”
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