The Boston Bruins will look to extend their winning streak to eight games when they visit the Ottawa Senators on Thursday night at Canadian Tire Centre. Joonas Korpisalo is set to start in goal for Boston, which has not lost since a 7-2 defeat to Ottawa on Oct. 27. The teams met again last week, with the Bruins earning a 3-2 overtime victory thanks to Pavel Zacha's game-winner.
Boston enters the matchup tied with Montreal for the Atlantic Division lead, both with 22 points. The Bruins have used their earlier loss in Ottawa as motivation, turning a rough stretch—where they dropped seven of eight games—into a teaching moment. "Those games, those stretches kind of help you," coach Marco Sturm said. "They’re not pretty but that kind of helped us to get out of it a little bit. It showed us that we can’t play that way."
Forward Mark Kastelic, a former Senator, reflected on the Oct. 27 defeat: "That stretch we had wasn’t fun... Maybe that was the turning point, but I think we were just trying to take the positives from the previous games and just use it as motivation... This time around, hopefully change the narrative a bit." Sturm added that the team showed improvement in their 3-2 home win over Ottawa last week. "It already started when they came to our building. We wanted to show them right away, this is not the team that we are," he said.
Ottawa comes off a 3-2 overtime loss to the Dallas Stars on Tuesday and holds third place in the Atlantic with 20 points (8-5-4 record). Since the Oct. 27 win over Boston, the Senators are 3-1-3. Drake Batherson leads the team with 17 points (6 goals, 11 assists) in 14 games, while Tim Stutzle and Shane Pinto each have eight goals. Pinto agreed to a four-year contract extension on Thursday. Linus Ullmark has a 6-4-4 record with a 3.21 goals-against average and .870 save percentage in 14 starts.
No changes are expected to Boston's forward lines or defense pairs. The third line of Tanner Jeannot, Fraser Minten and Kastelic has been effective during the streak. Sturm praised the group: "It’s a good mix of everything... They’ve been great." David Pastrnak recently became the sixth Bruin to reach 400 career goals and needs one more to tie Rick Middleton for fifth in franchise history.
Projected Bruins lineup:
Forwards: Morgan Geekie – Marat Khusnutdinov – David Pastrnak; Alex Steeves – Pavel Zacha – Viktor Arvidsson; Tanner Jeannot – Fraser Minten – Mark Kastelic; Jeffrey Viel – Sean Kuraly – Mikey Eyssimont.
Defensemen: Nikita Zadorov – Charlie McAvoy; Hampus Lindholm – Andrew Peeke; Mason Lohrei – Henri Jokiharju.
Goalies: Joonas Korpisalo, Jeremy Swayman.