Desert Bound B's: Bruins vs. Coyotes Preview

Last night in the Hub of Hockey, the riot squads were called off and the Bruins were able to shut down the Dallas Stars en route to a 3-0 rout that’s settled down the masses of B’s fans, at least for now.

While the Bruins earned a “that’s how you do it” from most B’s fans for their efforts, Claude Julien’s squad was able to do all the things that made them such a successful team last season. For starters, they were able to kill of an early penalty to Patrice Bergeron 18 seconds into the game, avoiding the loss of any sort of momentum. The Bruins also capitalized on their up-ice rushes, putting three goals by Marty Turco on 29 shots.

In the eyes of Bruins Nation, three players stood out in particular. Michael Ryder, who moved up to the top line, playing with Marc Savard and Marco Sturm had arguably his best game of the season. Although he was held to just one point, Ryder had some great opportunities.

Tim Thomas, who stoned all 27 of Dallas’ shots showed some great poise when under fire and was bailed out numerous times by great defensive efforts from his blue-liners.

The Bruins first star of the game has to go to Marc Savard, who had a phenomenal night offensively as he was constantly creating offensive chances for his linemates and took advantage of his own chances as he banged home two goals by Marty Turco, the second being an absolute bullet that I’m convinced Turco simply didn’t see.

Charging into Arizona, the Bruins will look to continue to ride their momentum from last night as they’re hosted by Dave Tippett’s Phoenix Coyotes.

Coming into tonight’s game, the Boston Bruins will be without forward Milan Lucic, who injured himself during last night’s tilt in the Lone Star State and have called up bruising forward Guillaume Lefebvre from Providence to stand in for Lucic tonight. Lefebvre has one assist and 25 penalty minutes in four games with the Providence Bruins so far this season.

The game plan tonight for Boston will be much of the same, put the pressure on the young Coyotes early and often. Although Ilya Bryzgalov is in the midst of a spectacular start to the season, posting a 4-1-0 record with a 1.17 goals against average, including two shutouts, the Bruins will undoubtedly up the pressure on the 29-year-old Russian netminder as they did on Turco last night.

For the Coyotes, the focus will be on Shane Doan, who’s off to a seemingly typical slow start, scoring just three points in six games so far in 2009-10.

Players To Watch

For Boston, keep your eyes out for defensemen Johnny Boychuk, currently filling in for injured blue-liner Dennis Wideman. The AHL’s 2008-09 Eddie Shore Award winning defensemen, Boychuk is coming off two very strong games where he showed a strong awareness of his space and where the play was going while continuing to throw his body around very well. At this rate, Boychuk will make fans forget all about the loss of Shane Hnidy as the team’s seventh defensemen.

Two more players to take note of are Marc Savard and Mark Recchi. Savard is currently sitting at 199 career goals, one shy of 200 while Recchi is just an assist away from 900 in his career.

Currently, as it stands, the Phoenix Coyotes are the Pacific Division leaders (crazy season, huh). A player who’s seemingly thriving under the system put into place by Dave Tippett is forward Radim Vrbata. Three goals and an assist in six games is making a lot of us forget that Vrbata was the same player who jetted back home to Czechoslovakia after being upset with the Tampa Bay Lightning just 18 games into a lucrative three year contract last season.

Scottie Upshall is another player to keep tabs on tonight if you’re a Boston player. Upshall has absolutely killed Tim Thomas, well actually any Boston goaltender, throughout his career and has eight points in as many games against Boston throughout his NHL tenure. While Upshall’s currently sitting with just two goals so far this season, it’s very possible that he could be the one to make the difference between a Boston win and Boston loss.

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Ty