Bruins going back to what worked in Toronto

The hope is that the Bruins learned their lesson about messing with something that was working against the Maple Leafs and haven’t given away too much momentum while looking to avoid a winner-take-all Game 7 scenario on their own home ice where they’ve lost two of three games in the series.

At the very least the Bruins go into Game 6 in Toronto fully confident they can win there after taking each of the first two road games in the series, and with the Leafs having lost six home playoff games in a row in front of their fans.

“It gives you a lot of confidence. We played two really good games there,” said Jim Montgomery. “There’s a little bit of the mentality that we have to bring our own juice, we have to rely on each other. It’s kind of like a Band of Brothers mentality, which I think is something that our team really thrives on.

“When you’re on the road in the playoffs you spend all of your time together. It’s so much easier to eliminate the outside noise when you’re on the road. These guys are watching other playoff games together, they’re having meals together and we are having team meals together. So it’s a little easier to stay dialed in and you’re talking hockey a lot.”

The other encouraging news is that the Bruins have reverted back to their power play units from the first few games of the series when Brad Marchand and Charlie McAvoy headlined one unit, and David Pastrnak was working with Pavel Zacha and Shattenkirk on a second unit that was getting equal time on the ice. Both units combined to score six power-play goals in the first four games of the series even if No. 88 has yet to register his own power play strike while totaling up two goals and four points in the series to this point.

Interestingly, he had fewer shots on net than Marchand in this series up until Game 5 when he took over the team lead with 15 shots on net in three games. That’s a pretty good total, but not quite as active as a guy that led everybody in the NHL not named Nathan Mackinnon, in shots on net during the NHL regular season.

Pastrnak wasn’t at his best in the Game 5 loss by the Bruins, but then again pretty much nobody in a Bruins uniform was aside from Jeremy Swayman between the pipes.

“It’s hard to say anybody was close to a breakthrough [in Game 5],” said Montgomery. “I thought [Pastrnak’s] game was building in Game 4. You saw our team game [in Game 5] and it wasn’t up to snuff. It wasn’t up to our standard.”

The entire Boston Bruins lineup from top-to-bottom, including Pastrnak, will need to be up to snuff if they hope to finish off the series in Toronto and avoid a Game 7, and they could use a superstar performance from No. 88 much like the one Auston Matthews put on in Game 2 to help lead his Leafs team to victory in that early game in the series before missing Game 5 and now Thursday night’s Game 6 with some kind of illness.