The Bruins head to Pittsburgh on Thursday, and Marco Sturm wants a cleaner road effort after calling out sloppy play away from home.
Boston arrives at 11-4-1, first in the Atlantic and fourth in the NHL. The Bruins have won two straight, the latest a 3-2 shootout win over Vegas on Monday.
The standings look great. The split underneath them is less comfortable.
At TD Garden the Bruins are 7-1-0. On the road they are 4-3-1, and that gap is exactly what Sturm has been talking about. Wins away from home are still wins, but his message is that the way Boston has played them is not sustainable.
Sturm has been demanding a lot from everyone lately, including the kids. He's still preaching patience with James Hagens, which tells you the coach is looking for habits, not just results.
Pittsburgh looks like the right opponent to fix things against, at least on paper. The Penguins are 5-8-2, 28th in the NHL, and they have lost three straight, the latest a 3-2 home loss to Vegas on Tuesday.
But they are 4-2-1 at home, so this isn't a free pass. A sloppy first period in that building would be on Boston.
Pastrnak and Hagens carry the Bruins offense
When Boston does score, David Pastrnak is usually in the middle of it. He leads the team with 20 points in 16 games, 8 goals and 12 assists, and three of those goals have come on the power play.
His workload is part of the story too. We already looked at how Sturm leans on Pastrnak's line, and a road game against a team this shaky is a chance to spread the load.
Hagens has quietly become the next name on the scoresheet. The 20-year-old has 12 points, 6 goals and 6 assists, which puts the seventh overall pick of the 2025 draft well ahead of where most people expected him in November.
Boston's +20 goal differential, 58 for and 38 against, shows the team is winning the games it should win. What the Bruins still have to show Sturm is that they can do it on the road without the sloppiness he keeps pointing out, starting Thursday in Pittsburgh.
