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It Must Be The B's - March 20, 2023 - By Jared Clinton
FORTUNE FAVORS THE bold, or so the ancient Latin proverb would have you believe. Truth is, that isn’t always the case. Take the story of Gaius Plinius Secundus, known more commonly as Pliny the Elder. The Roman author, philosopher and naval commander is said to have uttered the phrase as he undertook a rescue mission amid the eruption of Mount Vesuvius against the advice of members of his crew. Great rallying cry that it might have been, Pliny’s assertion that bravery was the correct course of action turned out to be fatal; he died, some historians have posited, as a result of the volcanic fumes. Safe to say fortune didn’t favor his boldness.
We present to you this brief history lesson on the perils of brash decision-making not to insinuate that projecting a Stanley Cup champion is at all tantamount to rushing headlong into a volcanic eruption. Of course not. Rather, we’re simply trying to point out that the bold decision is, at times, in direct conflict with the obvious (and correct) move.
Because while, yes, it would be audacious of us to proclaim that the analytically superlative Carolina Hurricanes, deep and dangerous Toronto Maple Leafs, defending-champion Colorado Avalanche or Connor McDavid-led Edmonton Oilers will be the last team standing at the end of the playoffs, it seems a fool’s errand to ignore or in any event wave away what the Boston Bruins have accomplished this season. Indeed, the Bruins have been so overwhelmingly dominant, and so much better than any team in the playoff field, that picking another club to win the 2022-23 Stanley Cup would feel like doing so only for the sake of it.
Just consider the facts. As the Bruins entered their final 20 games of the season, they sat 11 points clear of any other team in the race for the Presidents’ Trophy, had already become the fastest team in NHL history to reach 100 points and had only lost eight games in regulation, four fewer than any other club. Moreover, Boston had only one extended losing streak – a three-gamer just before January’s All-Star break – and boasted a .500 or better record against every single team in the league. When restricting that field to playoff-bound or bubble teams, the Bruins had a perfect points percentage against 10 clubs, a better-than-.500 mark against six and had shared the points with the other four.
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Perhaps there is no greater indication of how good the Bruins have been, though, than coach Jim Montgomery committing what some in hockey circles might consider a cardinal sin: accepting and acknowledging just how good his team is. Asked in early March about how well his team had been playing and its place atop the league standings, Montgomery didn’t offer a well-trod platitude about keeping the proverbial foot on the gas. He instead told reporters that the Bruins “can go 5-15 and probably finish first,” adding that though his math might not be exact, it’s not all that far off.
There exists, as always, a coterie of fans and pundits who assert and possibly actually believe that this exact thing could be Boston’s downfall, that spending so long atop the standings and playing few truly meaningful games down the stretch will somehow prove costly. It’s a talking point to which you can set your watch. But it is also a notion of which all should be disabused.
Consider that in the past 17 seasons, eight teams have had fairly dogged fights on their way to the Presidents’ Trophy – seasons in which they finished atop the league by less than a two-percent margin – while nine teams have been able to somewhat coast their way into the top regular-season record and finished their respective campaigns with at least a four-percent edge on the second-place team. How have these teams fared in the playoffs? Well, those from the latter group have had more post-season success, winning two Cups, making three conference finals and winning an average of 1.6 rounds. The former group has won an average of one round and not once hoisted Lord Stanley’s mug.
And it’s important to note that any signs the Bruins had actually let off the gas were nonexistent. Montgomery and his coaching staff aren’t seeing any of the inattentiveness that could be associated with a team content to simply play out the string. “We’ve had a fairly comfortable lead for a while,” Montgomery told reporters in March, “and I think (Bruins assistant coach) Joe Sacco said it best the other day. ‘It’s amazing how hard these guys play,’ knowing what we’re talking about right now. We continually talk about areas we need to get better at.”
WE’RE GOING TO BE A TOUGH OUT IN THE PLAYOFFS BECAUSE WE HAVE GOT A LOT OF PLAYERS WHO GO TO AREAS WHERE YOU SCORE GOALS IN PLAYOFF TIME– Jim Montgomery
But those areas, truthfully, are few and far between. Boston boasted the second-highest rate of scoring and a goals-against rate nearly half a goal lower than any other club. The Bruins also had a top-10 power play and the NHL’s best penalty kill by a full three-percent margin. Montgomery had his charges humming at five-a-side, too. Boston was a top-10 club in shot share and had the third-lowest rate of expected goals against and seventh-best in expected goals for.
In no small part, that comes down to the individuals. Not enough can be said about Linus Ullmark, whose remarkable season has already been explored in this edition starting on pg. 16 and landed him on the cover. Given the influence goaltending can have on a Cup run, he’ll be integral moving forward. But what has made and will make Boston border upon unstoppable is that its fate won’t hinge on Ullmark. The play of second-string netminder Jeremy Swayman is indicative of that, but the collection of talent on the back end and up front serves to spell it out further.
Defensively, the top four of Charlie McAvoy, Hampus Lindholm, Brandon Carlo and deadline acquisition Dmitry Orlov has been rock-solid since its formation, and the defense corps has depth on depth, like some sort of puck-moving, shot-blocking, attack-snuffing Matryoshka. Each of Connor Clifton, Derek Forbort and Matt Grzelcyk have performed admirably when called upon for third-pairing minutes or asked to move up the lineup. And if you want to question at all whether that’s been the case, consider Boston won 11 of its first 13 games when its blueline was without McAvoy and saw only Clifton and Lindholm skate in all 13 of those contests.
There is no mistaking the players on whom the Bruins most rely, however, and that is their three-headed monster. Already with one Rocket Richard Trophy to his credit, David Pastrnak has asserted himself as one of this generation’s greatest goal-scorers and was on target to flirt with 60 goals. Brad Marchand, after missing seven games at the start of the season while recovering from hip surgery, was scoring at a point-per-game pace and playing the same brand of effective and agitating hockey that has put him in the top 10 in Hart Trophy voting in four of the past six seasons.
But the focal point remains Patrice Bergeron. And what more can be said about the surefire Hall of Famer? Though offensively gifted, the Bruins captain and perennial Selke Trophy candidate remains a defensive savant – no one, and we mean no one, can shut down and almost entirely negate opposing stars like Bergeron. It must be noted, too, that there is an intangible nature to what Bergeron will bring during this particular post-season. The beating heart of the franchise for more than a decade, there is uncertainty about whether this will be the 37-year-old’s last hurrah. Do not discount the way the emotion surrounding Bergeron’s potential departure could buoy the Bruins.
If the Bruins’ offensive success was reliant on those three and those three alone, mind you, perhaps there would be reason to be less bullish on Boston even in spite of their outstanding record. But that’s just not the case.
The Bruins will end the season with at least seven others who are double-digit goal-scorers, including Jake DeBrusk, David Krejci and Charlie Coyle. If they’re healthy by the post-season, you can add Taylor Hall and Nick Foligno to that list. If they’re not, however, the Bruins’ additions of Tyler Bertuzzi and Garnet Hathaway at the trade deadline bring additional scoring punch that complements Boston’s contingent of top-tier talent. And about Bertuzzi and Hathaway: though neither suddenly transforms this outfit into the Big Bad Bruins of yore – while unafraid to drop the gloves, Boston is middling in hits – both add snarl to a group already boasting its share. “We have a lot of guys that are really hard to play against,” Montgomery said. “We’re going to be a tough out in the playoffs because we have a lot of players who go to areas where you score goals in playoff time.”
No team, of course, is preordained to win the Stanley Cup. Remember the aforementioned stat about the playoff fates of clubs finishing in first place by a wide margin? The post-lockout high-water mark, 12.8 percent, is held by the same 2019 Tampa Bay Lightning squad, who famously flamed out of the playoffs in four games against the eighth-seeded Columbus Blue Jackets. But these Bruins have been on such a steady and unyielding upward trajectory that we can see these playoffs ending no other way than with Boston in the winner’s circle for the first time since 2011 and the seventh time in franchise history. By our estimation, fortune favors the Bruins