Bruins put a bow on stellar regular season

There will be time for playoff previews and ample lead moments to break down the strengths and weaknesses for both the Boston Bruins and the Buffalo Sabres in their playoff matchup that brings up strong memories of the old-time hockey Adams Division playoffs.

But it feels like the Bruins put an impressive exclamation point on a highly successful 100-point regular season with a 4-0 takedown of a New Jersey Devils team playing out the string at TD Garden on Tuesday night. The Bruins went into the postseason on a modest two-game winning streak to claim the top Eastern Conference wild card spot, while teams like the Columbus Blue Jackets and New York Islanders finished on the outside looking in with envy and more than a hint of bitterness.

It wasn’t perfection from Boston by any means, but it was a tremendous first step for a Bruins team emerging from the ashes of last season’s disastrous draft lottery finish, and a rousing success for first-year head coach Marco Sturm.

The importance of getting to that 100-point mark was underscored earlier this week at Monday’s team practice when the number “100 points” was written in red marker and circled on the dry-erase board inside the TD Garden home dressing room.

“Pretty amazing…I never even thought, to be honest with you, about getting 100 points [this season],” said Sturm. “Because I thought of hard it is to get that amount in this league…it’s a hard league. It just says it all. The way that we played and the way that the guys performed every day. The ups and downs we had all year long, but I said before that [the players] really took off after Christmas.

“I’m so proud of them, the whole coaching staff and the whole [Boston Bruins] staff to accomplish 100 points is incredible. I’m very happy and excited to reach that goal and share that with the great fans of Boston.”

It wasn’t just the teamwide accomplishment either, as so many individual players were recognized and able to reach milestones, or career years, with Tuesday’s shutout win as a nice exclamation point. David Pastrnak assisted on Morgan Geekie’s career-high 39th goal of the season, less than a minute into the game, and became only the third Bruins player in franchise history (Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito) to record four straight 100-point seasons in Black and Gold.

Geekie set a career-high in goals with 39 scores for No. 39, and Mark Kastelic added a pair of goals in Tuesday’s win to finish with a career-high 12 goals as a hard-nosed fixture on the B’s fourth line. 

Viktor Arvidsson scored his 25th goal of the season as well and became the first player since Jarome Iginla over 10 years ago to pot 25 goals in his first campaign with the Bruins.

The story of this season for the Black and Gold, in many ways, was so many players enjoying career years, personal bests or very strong bounce-back seasons and that reflects on the environment created by the players and the coaching staff, and by the strong bond that this group forged through early doubt and a season of challenging adversity in between the little triumphs.