The Boston Bruins are back from a three-game road trip and will host the New York Islanders for their first home game of the 2025 calendar year on Sunday evening.
Both teams are looking to break three-game losing streaks after both suffered defeats to the Toronto Maple Leafs in the last three nights. The Bruins lost 6-4 in Toronto on Saturday to start a back-to-back set, while the Islanders lost 2-1 to the Leafs on Thursday in the second game of a home-and-home series.
In Toronto, the Bruins came back from 2-0 and 3-2 deficits to tie the game, but it wasn’t enough against the high-powered Leafs offense led by a Matthew Knies hat trick and five-point performances from Knies and Mitch Marner.
“It’s difficult in this league to play catch-up hockey, but it was 2-2 going into the third (period) and we had two breakdowns that they capitalized on,” Bruins interim coach Joe Sacco said. “When you get three or four (goals), you hope to come away with at least one or two points and that didn’t happen, so we’re disappointed with that.”
Boston hasn’t won since Dec. 28 against the Columbus Blue Jackets, with losses on the road to the Washington Capitals and the New York Rangers (3-1 and 2-1) before Saturday’s defeat.
Despite the loss, Boston showed signs of breaking out of a recent scoring slump, as they had scored just eight goals in their previous four games.
Against the Maple Leafs, David Pastrnak scored his first multi-goal game of the season, reaching 15 goals with a pair in the third period, tying captain Brad Marchand for the team lead.
“Hopefully it … gives guys confidence, myself included, that we can start helping out the team here and getting some more goals,” forward Trent Frederic said.
Although the Islanders have only won three of their last 10 games, coach Patrick Roy believes his team is playing well recently. That includes their most recent loss to Toronto, which came on a tiebreaking goal with 2:59 left in regulation.
“Overall I wouldn’t change a thing in our game, we’d love to see just better shots, the quality of our shots, that’s all,” Roy said. “The guys are working and playing hard. … I have no complaints other than not scoring goals. If we get those goals, it’ll turn around for us, I still believe in that.”
In fact, the Islanders’ last three losses were decided by a total of four goals.
With the team moving closer to the bottom of the competitive Eastern Conference, finding ways to win is crucial.
“I think right now I’d take a horrible game out of our team to win a hockey game,” forward Mathew Barzal said. “That’s really the only thing that matters right now is to win a hockey game. That’s really the only thing that matters right now is wins and losses.”
New York’s injury report still isn’t clear, despite Barzal, Anthony Duclair, and Adam Pelech returning around the holiday break. With Semyon Varlamov (lower body) still out, Ilya Sorokin has started 14 of the past 15 games in goal.
Dennis Cholowski will be added to the defensive pairings for Sunday, as Isaiah George remains day-to-day after taking an elbow to the head from Toronto’s Max Domi during Thursday’s game. George is now in concussion protocol.
Marchand and Pavel Zacha each scored twice in the Bruins’ 6-3 win over the Islanders in Elmont, N.Y., on Nov. 27, their first meeting of the season. Brock Nelson had two goals and one assist for the Islanders in that game.
