RALEIGH, N.C. — Hockey players are a superstitious lot, and the Bruins weren’t taking the bait on Tuesday when asked of their current odds of punching their ticket to the Stanley Cup Final.
With their win at PNC Arena on Tuesday night, the Bruins now hold a commanding 3-0 lead in its best-of-seven series against the Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference Final — with a win on Thursday clinching the Prince of Wales Trophy for Boston and a trip to the fourth and final round of the postseason.
Historically speaking, B’s fans might as well start perusing for flights to either San Jose or St. Louis, even if Carolina’s playoff hopes remain alive — for now. Teams that have taken a 3-0 lead in a best-of-seven series in the Stanley Cup Playoffs own an all-time series record of 189-4 — good for a 97.7 percent winning percentage.
But the players in the room aren’t looking ahead — especially with the ‘Canes expected to throw one last punch on their home ice Thursday night.
“Generally speaking, the fourth game is always the toughest one to win,” Zdeno Chara said. We have to prepare for that and we’re taking one game at a time and the next game is the most important game. So we are not looking for anything that’s going to be given to us. We have to earn it.”
Chara can speak from experience when it comes to not overlooking an opponent.
Back in 2010, Chara was 32 years old — and poised to lead the Bruins to the Eastern Conference Final after Boston built itself a 3-0 series lead against the Flyers. Other players on that club include current B’s stalwarts in Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci and Tuukka Rask.
But the 2009-10 Bruins found themselves etched on the worst page of the NHL record book — becoming one of just four teams to be sent packing after holding a 3-0 series lead.
“I have different motivations now than back then,” Chara said, keeping things short when asked of his memories of that 2010 series. “I can’t recall exactly what was happening then. Just more focusing on the present and what’s happening now.”
While Bruce Cassidy was at the helm of the Providence Bruins during that collapse in 2010, both he and Torey Krug experienced a similar fate during the 2013 Calder Cup Playoffs — falling to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins in seven games after building a 3-0 cushion.
Both the 2010 Bruins or 2013 Baby B’s were given black eyes by their postseason failures — but plenty of lessons learned for both the players in the room and Boston’s current bench boss.
“I would think that you would have more urgency, to not want to go down that road again,” Cassidy said of the mentality of a club when given a 3-0 cushion in a best-of-seven series. “It’s typical, you learn from your experiences, good and bad in life, so that’s one that I think you realize that you don’t want to give one away.
“Listen, it can happen. A team catches fire the right way or at the right time. But at the end of the day, I think it does harden you. Understanding to have the killer instinct, you never know what the next day is going to bring, so make sure you’re ready to play, prepare to win and usually when you’re ready and prepared, good things happen.”
For as much as that 2010 collapse still stands as a low point in the Chara-Bergeron era of the Bruins — the pain was dulled considerably given the fact that Boston hoisted the Stanley Cup just a year later, with the Bruins sweeping the Flyers in a second-round rematch.
Having David Krejci back in the fold — after he suffered a broken wrist during the 2010 Flyers series — made all the difference, with the pivot tallying four goals and nine total points in the four-game sweep the following spring.
“Back then, we learned from that. We were up 3-0, we lost four in a row, out in the second round,” Krejci said. “We had lots of the same people the next year and we played them again in the second round and we had a chance again to close it being up 3-0 and we did. We learned from that, but this is a new team.”
Krejci is right in that regard. While Chara, Bergeron, Rask and himself are still key cogs on a club just one win away from a Stanley Cup Final, the 2018-19 Bruins boast eight players aged 25 or under. When Simon Gagne potted that go-ahead goal against the B’s in Game 7 back in 2010, Charlie McAvoy was just 12 years old.
Credit to them, this Hurricanes club has shown some fight — bouncing back from an 0-2 hole against the Capitals in the first round — and PNC Arena will once again be rowdy during a win-or-go-home scenario for the home team.
But the way this Bruins team is operating right now, a quick exit for Carolina is inevitable.
I mean …
- Carolina can’t beat Tuukka Rask, who has been unconscious throughout the series with a .944 save percentage — stopping 18 of the 20 high-danger shots that have come his way against a ‘Canes team that has generated the fourth-most quality looks among all NHL clubs this postseason. Just look at this. Carolina has nothing to show for in the slot.
- Every forward trio for Boston is contributing — with the Krejci line, Coyle line and Kuraly line all out in the ice for a 5v5 goal scored so far this series. Add in the four goals scored from blueliners (Steven Kampfer, Matt Grzelcyk and Connor Clifton), and the Hurricanes simply don’t have the personnel to keep tabs on all of Boston’s skaters during O-zone possessions.
- Most of Carolina’s efforts have been focused on taking away Boston’s top line of Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak — who have tallied a whopping one point so far this series during 5v5 play. Still, they’ve had their chances, with Boston generating eight high-danger looks when that line has been called upon during 5v5 play. And so long as Bergeron can negate one of Carolina’s top-six options down the other end of the ice, Boston’s secondary scoring should be all the heavy lifting that the B’s need. In the 12:51 of 5v5 TOI in which Bergeron has matched up against Sebastian Aho, Carolina has just two shot attempts.
- That 2010 Bruins club was without a top-six center in Krejci for that Flyers series, while Marc Savard was still struggling to find his game in the aftermath of the eventual career-ending hit he received from Matt Cooke just two months earlier. The 2018 Bruins will miss Chris Wagner, but a team that always preaches the “next man up” mentality have a physical fall-back option in Noel Acciari.