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With playoffs within their grasp, the Bruins are peaking at the perfect time
"For us, the playoffs already started a long time ago."
Marco Sturm and the Bruins have not officially punched their tickets to the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Seven more bouts remain on Boston’s 82-game regular season slate. They’ll need to bank a few more points before they can catch their breath amid a grueling sprint to the finish line.
As such, it came as little surprise that Boston’s bench boss didn’t want to look ahead to the postseason on Tuesday night.
But not for the reason one might expect.
For Sturm and his club, the playoffs don’t begin on April 18. Rather, they’ve been embroiled in high-stakes hockey for weeks now.
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“For us, the playoffs already started a long time ago,” Sturm said after Boston’s 6-3 win over Dallas on Tuesday. “I think that’s a good thing about our team right now — we want to get challenged right now against really good hockey teams.”
That Bruins’ battle-tested mettle is starting to reveal itself.
For all of the talk of the perilous road that Boston was forced to trudge through in the closing weeks of the season, Sturm’s team is plowing a path toward postseason hockey in short order.
On March 21, the Bruins ran the risk of having their playoff odds dip to nearly a 50/50 coin flip had they lost to the Detroit Red Wings on the road.
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Instead, a stout showing from Jeremy Swayman in net helped Boston secure a 4-2 win at Little Caesars Arena — bolstering the club’s playoff hopes to over 70 percent.
After Tuesday’s win over one of the top teams in the league in Dallas, Boston now has a 98 percent chance of playing postseason hockey — according to HockeyStats.
That surge is rooted in the warpath that the Bruins have waged against several contending clubs over the past week.
A deflating home loss to a woeful Toronto team on March 24 took some of the wind out of Boston’s sails, due in large part to the “Murderers’ Row” that awaited the Bruins over the next week.
”Everyone was talking about the schedule,” Sturm said. “You know, the Bruins have the toughest schedule. Yeah, I believe that, too. But what I liked about it is it always seems like we play better when we’re playing against better teams.”
It’s hard to argue with Sturm’s sentiment.
In the span of just six days, the Bruins collected eight out of a possible eight points against some of the hottest teams in the league — beating the Buffalo Sabres, Minnesota Wild, Columbus Blue Jackets, and Dallas Stars.
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Two of those victories on the road against Buffalo and Columbus were belief-building comebacks secured in overtime and the shootout, respectively.
On home ice, Boston controlled play for extended stretches against a pair of Western Conference titans in the Wild and Stars.
Dallas had few answers for Sturm and the Bruins’ bruising approach on Tuesday. A high-octane Stars roster was limited to just 16 total shots on goal at TD Garden, including three over the final 20 minutes of play.
Any hope of a rally from Glen Gulutzan’s roster was snuffed out with every green-and-white puck carrier that was stapled into the glass via a thunderous hit.
Entering the third period stuck in a 2-2 deadlock, Elias Lindholm gave Boston the lead just 13 seconds into the frame with a power-play goal, while Henri Jokiharju’s first goal donning the spoked-B at 5:51 served as the game-winning tally.
Viktor Arvidsson — now up to 22 points in his last 18 games since the NHL returned from the Olympic break — added a pair of empty-net goals to secure his fifth career hat trick.
“I think we have fun together, and we put a lot of emphasis on being hard on each other, really pushing each other,” Arvidsson said of Boston’s strong play down the stretch. “I think in that regard, we’re really happy where we are.”
Tuesday’s results across the NHL benefited Boston beyond its own fourth-straight statement victory.
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The four teams below Boston in the race for a wild-card spot — the Blue Jackets, Senators, Flyers, and Red Wings — all lost on Tuesday.
Boston now has a six-point cushion over Columbus in the first wild-card spot in the East — and an eight-point lead over clubs below the postseason cut-off line.
But the Bruins are focusing more on their own game at this point as they try to carry this momentum into an extended four-game road trip against the Panthers, Lightning, Flyers, and Hurricanes.
So far, there’s a lot to like as the playoffs approach.
And as teams begin to brace themselves for first-round bouts in the coming weeks, few clubs across the Eastern Conference are looking forward to a meeting with this Bruins crew — a group not lacking in confidence as their collective belief continues to boil over.
”I do believe so,” Sturm said when asked if Boston can beat anyone at this stage of the season. “I don’t know when it started, but the Minny game, even the Columbus game, the Detroit game, those were big, big games. Different, but they were all big. And we won.
“I think that really – guys are believing in themselves, and they know we’re a good, solid team when we’re on top of it. So yeah, the belief is there right now.”
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