The Bruins improved to 15-3-3 last night after they defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-2 at TD Garden. Tyler Seguin led the charge with two goals while Patrice Bergeron added another in the victory. The story of the season to this point has been the great play of that second line which includes: Brad Marchand-Bergeron and Seguin.

This line has been on fire as of late almost carrying the Bruins through the month of March as the first line is having its struggles and the third line has its pictures on the side of a milk carton. In Bergeron’s last five games, he has tallied three goals (one GWG) and five assists while taking home the NHL’s second star last week (Model of consistency). Marchand has been just as impressive notching two goals and five assists over that same span including a game-winning-goal versus the Lightning. Lastly, Seguin is starting to get a hang of the whole “goal scoring” thing as he has scored four goals in his last five games while adding two assists.

The Marchand-Bergeron-Seguin line has 25 goals and 34 assists on the year and has really clicked right from the start of the season. Bergeron leads the NHL with a +17 while his line mates Seguin and Marchand have a +16 and +15 respectively.
Head coach Claude Julien spoke to the media last night after the win versus Toronto about the Bergeron line performing well once again.

“Well, the goals that they score were, besides the empty netter, pretty indicative of what we’ve asked of our players,” Julien said.

“The first one was a great effort by (Brad) Marchand, right in front of their bench, battling for the puck in front of their net. He had two guys around him, finally let Seggy get loose with the puck and he did a great job of taking it to the net and cutting in. Bergy was right there, another one again, Marchy does the work along the boards, chips it past their pinching D and makes a great pass to Seggy again. So, it was just one of those games that that line did a great job, as far as getting pucks past their D’s and working through it and doing the grunt work.”

The most impressive aspect of this line is the play of Marchand and Seguin without the puck. They are playing great two-way hockey. You think they are taking after their line mate Patrice Bergeron? Seguin is skating the length of the ice to break up odd man rushes, Marchand is back-checking as if his life was on the line and Bergeron can only continue his consistency on offense and defense.

This is really the B’s “first line”, but in Julien’s strategy of rolling four lines, this is second on the depth chart. Bergeron and Marchand have been playing like All-Stars all season while Seguin was trying to find his stride and I think it is safe to say that he has. This line will continue to perform at a high level and with Seguin essentially back at full force, that will be a scary thing for the rest of the NHL.