Boston Bruins Must Take Advantage of Good Health, Momentum vs. Calgary Flames

For the second consecutive night and the third straight game, the Boston Bruins figure to dress all 18 of their regular skaters against the Calgary Flames at TD Garden on Thursday.

The visiting Flames, in addition to trying to snap out of a funk on the fly, are lacking five of their would-be minute-munchers due to injury and fresh off receiving word of Rene Bourque’s suspension.

Temporarily evicted from the Scotiabank Saddledome for the World Junior Championships, Calgary has lost four games in as many cities over the past week. Including Thursday’s affair, they have had no more than 48 hours to recover from one nipping and turn the playbook page.

Odd as it may seem, the Flames’ most advantageous roster tweak for their visit to Boston will be starting goaltender Miikka Kiprusoff’s happenstance night off. Leland Irving, who has spent the bulk of the year with Abbotsford in the AHL, will put in only his fourth NHL appearance and try to build upon a respectable 1-0-2 record.

But the Bruins, at the very least, are capable of canceling out that advantage. One sleep removed from throttling the Devils in New Jersey, 6-1, they will simply rotate out the Vezina-caliber Tim Thomas for the statistically superior Tuukka Rask.

Irving, who has taken three of a possible four points from two of the NHL’s top 10 offenses, is tasked with filtering out some of the mounting vinegar his team has collected on its road trip. Rask’s assignment is to build upon his personal four-game winning streak and paddle Boston along its do-it-yourself stream of momentum.

Dating back to his relief outing in Columbus on Dec. 10, Rask has allowed but one goal in 200 minutes and 58 seconds of crease time. That one solitary strike came amidst one of his lightest workloads of late, when he repelled 21 out of 22 shots en route to a 2-1 overtime win at Phoenix.

The Flames are, at best, slightly more offensively deprived than the Coyotes, but even more so with Bourque missing along with the ailing David Moss and Alex Tanguay.

Of those who will be available for Calgary on Thursday, the three starting forwards―Curtis Glencross, Jarome Iginla, Olli Jokinen―account for 43 out of the lineup’s 72 goals this season. That translates to nearly 60 percent of the production of the three twigs of one forward unit.

With Zdeno Chara and Johnny Boychuk, as well as defensively sound pivot Patrice Bergeron, all but guaranteed to be put on duty when Iginla’s line, the Bruins have no cause to give Rask the extramural workout of his career.

Lee Stempniak, Tim Jackman and Mikael Backlund can be busy puckslingers themselves when permitted. But beyond that, Calgary’s shriveled depth chart does not have much of an insurance policy.

At the other end, Irving comes in having withstood 40-plus shots on two occasions to salvage an overtime point and also stifled the potent Vancouver Canucks for a 3-1 victory.

Although, in that game, Vancouver burned itself by juggling with torches and testing Irving a slim 13 times through a scoreless first 40 minutes. Trailing in the shooting gallery, 24-13, at the start of the third period, the Canucks ran up a 17-7 edge in that category for the rest of the ride, but not before shedding first blood at the hands of Glencross.

In their last set of back-to-back games in mid-December, the Bruins got back-to-back multipoint performances from Bergeron, who also happened to insert two goals in New Jersey on Wednesday. Rich Peverley sprinkled two icebreaker goals and an assist over those two nights to help beat Los Angeles and Ottawa by a cumulative score of 8-2.

This time around, David Krejci and linemates Nathan Horton and Milan Lucic will be the Bruins to watch. They had their first tangible collaboration in recent memory Wednesday night when Lucic and Krejci set up Horton’s eventual game-winner on a power play. Krejci and Lucic went on to post two points apiece.

Thursday will pose a test of fastidiousness for the top line and a test of eagerness to put a floundering opponent to bed for the Bruins as a whole.