GDT: Gm 38: Ottawa Senators @ Boston Bruins | 12/27/13 | 7P ET | NESN, RDS |98.5 FM

[Fossy21]

Tonight's game along with the past few have me thinking...

The Thornton suspension, Erkisson concussion and Kelly injury may have had many upset and few worried initially but has turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the Bruins. After that Penguins game we are a much better team with those 3 out of the lineup.

- Finally Spooner gets the call and finds instant chemistry on the 3rd line
- Smith moves up and sparks the Bergeron line
- Marchand finds chemistry with Smith and turns his game around
- Our powerplay jumps to 5th best in the league (noone expected that in a million years).
- We have 3 legit scoring lines and our offense is PRODUCING

If Thornton never gets suspended and Erikkson is still on that 2nd line and Kelly never falls to injury, we still struggle with 3/4 lines... our powerplay is still atrocious and Spooner's talent gets wasted in the AHL.

I for one am quite pleased with the games I have been watching.... and the players currently making up this roster. I'd be happy to see Kelly or Erikkson come back to get Caron off the ice. And Dougie can't come back soon enough! But other than that. I'm not touching a thing!

While I agree with some of your points, our PP was not atrocious before the Pens game. We were 12th or so in the league with Eriksson on it, and that's with the first (Krejci) unit struggling a lot more than the other one. The Yeti to Smith move which the second unit has scored on mostly, they utilised at least twice with Eriksson still back, where Bergy drew an opposing forward, gave the puck to Loui, who fed Yeti who gave it to Smith for an "easy" tap-in. I don't think that unit has necessarily got better due to Spooner (though the third line even strength has looked as good these last few games as they did to around the 20 game mark of the season), it's that Iggy and the rest of the first unit has potted a few that has raised the success percentage by a decent margin.