On Sunday night, the Boston Bruins won a game in perhaps the neatest environment in which an NHL game has ever been played. On Thursday, the Bruins will return to a decidedly more rustic environment -- one that has been less than friendly to them lately.
The Bruins will look to snap their recent losing streak at Nassau Coliseum when they are scheduled to face the New York Islanders in Uniondale, N.Y.
It will be the first game for the Bruins since Sunday's 7-3 win over the Philadelphia Flyers in the NHL Outdoors at Lake Tahoe event. The Islanders last played Monday, when they ended a two-game losing streak by edging the visiting Buffalo Sabres 3-2.
The win Sunday snapped the first pointless streak of the season for the Bruins, who fell to the Islanders and New Jersey Devils in regulation in their two games before the trip to Lake Tahoe.
Playing against a backdrop consisting of the sun setting behind snow-covered mountains, the Bruins spotted the Flyers a 2-1 lead in the first period before taking control with four unanswered second-period goals. David Pastrnak scored in the opening minute of the first and second periods before capping the victory -- and his 11th career hat trick -- by scoring well after sunset with 2:56 left.
"Personally, that we played in both conditions with the sun and the dark, I think that was really great," Pastrnak said. "The dark is beautiful, too. You get to play outside. Overall, it was an unbelievable experience."
The experience Thursday will be a little more familiar for the Bruins against the Islanders, who have called the cramped confines of Nassau Coliseum home for most of their 48 seasons but are planning to move into a new hockey-only building for the start of the 2021-22 campaign.
The Bruins suffered their first two regulation losses of the season at the Coliseum, where they fell 1-0 on Jan. 18 and 4-2 on Feb. 13. The Coliseum is the only facility Boston's played in this season in which it has not won.
The Islanders earned the two wins in versatile fashion. The 1-0 victory was the Islanders' first over the Bruins since Dec. 19, 2019, while the win on Feb. 13 marked just the fourth time this season New York has scored more than three goals.
"You've got to play a hard game, you've got to play a north game (against the Bruins)," Islanders head coach Barry Trotz said Wednesday. "They go north, they put pucks in play and they execute, and they go up and down the ice pretty hard. We've beat them a couple ways, but the number one way for us has been we've got to try to match their north-south game every night."
The Bruins will take the ice Thursday -- and for the foreseeable future -- without rookie defenseman Jeremy Lauzon, who suffered a broken left hand in the first period Sunday. The Bruins said Wednesday that Lauzon will be reevaluated in a month.
--Field Level Media