With crucial back-to-back on deck, shorthanded & slumping Bruins team is set for toughest test yet

The Bruins have a habit of not looking ahead on the calendar towards the next opponent — regardless of whether it's a primetime matchup against a divisional foe or a sleepy weekend matinee against a cellar-dwelling club like the Minnesota Wild. 

But on Tuesday night, Brandon Carlo couldn’t help but look forward to what was next on Boston’s docket — a scheduled bout north of the border against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Friday night. Given the history and animosity (especially as of late) between these two Original Six clubs, it won’t take much for the Bruins to get up for this matchup at Scotiabank Arena.

And after collapsing in historic fashion against the Panthers on Tuesday night, Carlo echoed what should be the sentiment of many in the B's locker room.

If there was a game for the Bruins to right the ship, it would be on Friday up in enemy territory. 

“We love to play Toronto. That’s a great rivalry from years past in the playoffs, especially. It’s a lot of fun to play against them. I think it will be a great opportunity for us to reset against a very good team in Toronto and have some fun with it as well," he said.

Carlo is right in that the Bruins relish whenever they get a chance to face off against Toronto's porous defense. Over their last 21 matchups against the Leafs (postseason included), the Bruins have tallied four or more goals in 10 of those games — including four wins in which the B's lit the lamp seven times.

David Pastrnak, already one of the most dynamic offensive players in the league, seems to shift into another gear when facing off against blue and white sweaters — with the winger now up to an absurd 39 points in his last 26 games against Toronto.

Yes, the Bruins should be licking their chops for Friday's matchup against a Maple Leafs team facing its own fair share of recent woes. But given Boston's recent slide and a complementary deluge of injuries, there are far more easy pickings that Bruce Cassidy and his staff would have ideally liked to match up against in order to get the B's back on track.

Alas, that opportunity was squandered last week when Boston failed to show up for a matchup against a sordid Red Wings team that had just one regulation win to show in its last 13 games. 

As such, this is the hand that a battered Bruins team has been dealt — with a chance to



right the ship from this recent four-game skid coming by way of a crucial back-to-back slate against the Maple Leafs and Washington Capitals.

Along with the recent woes that have plagued the Bruins during this 0-2-2 stretch (poor starts, even worse finishes, an .868 save percentage for Tuukka Rask over his three games, four power-play goals surrendered by the B's PK over the last three games), Boston is also set to enter this key stretch severely out-manned — with the likes of Torey Krug, Jake DeBrusk, Kevan Miller, Brett Ritchie, David Backes, Karson Kuhlman and others all sidelined.

Even one of the bright spots from Boston's recent stretch of call-ups, Zach Senyshyn, is going to be on the shelf for some time — as a lower-body injury he suffered on Tuesday against the Panthers will sideline him for at least four weeks.

Boston's lineup might be decimated, but the Leafs' roster isn't too far behind it. Even if John Tavares is back in the fold after missing weeks with a fractured finger, another top-six weapon in Mitch Marner is now ruled out for the time being, with the winger set to be re-evaluated in four weeks due to an ankle injury. The Leafs third-line center, Alex Kerfoot, is also now out indefinitely following surgery for dental fractures.

So yes, Boston might be slumping, but Friday stands as the perfect opportunity for the Bruins to get back in the win column and stomp on the throat of a divisional opponent that's managed to flounder even worse than Boston over this recent stretch.

In a shocking development, the Leafs (4-4-2 over their last 10 games) and their defense are still not that good (3.25 GA/G - 11th in NHL), but it's been the expected strengths of Toronto's club that have been the most startling development out of the gate. A power play featuring the likes of Tavares, Morgan Rielly and Auston Matthews is just 20th in the league with a success rate of 17.6%, while the Leafs rank 21st in 5v5 high-danger scoring chances per 60 minutes with a rate of 9.81.

One shouldn't expect a Leafs roster with this much firepower to remain dormant for long. But with its offense sputtering in the early stages of the 2019-20 campaign, Toronto does seem to be stumbling at the perfect time for the Bruins to take advantage of Friday's matchup.

But even with a win on Friday against a still uber-talented Leafs club, the B's don't have much time to rest on their laurels, as the top team in the league in Washington is slated to come to town the following night.

Boston has usually fared pretty well when it comes to back-to-back slates, posting a record of 9-4-2 since last season on the second leg of these games. But if we're including prior history in these scouting reports, we have to address the elephant in the room when it comes to the Bruins and their horrid history against the Caps.

Boston might have emerged victorious in its last meeting against Washington — a 1-0 road victory back on Feb. 3 — but ahead of that matchup, the Bruins had lost 14 STRAIGHT to the Capitals. Their last victory prior to February was all the way back on March 29, 2014 — with the Caps outscoring the B’s by a 52-21 margin during their extended winning streak.

It should assuage some fears that Washington goalie Braden Holtby (who boasts a 16-3-0 record and a .946 save percentage against Boston) has looked rather mortal this season with a .903 save percentage.

But even if Holtby has taken a step back, the rest of the Caps' crop of franchise cornerstones have not, to put it lightly. Washington's power play is still a top-10 unit, John Carlson (30 points in 20 games) is playing like a Norris Trophy frontrunner and Alex Ovechkin's shot is, as expected, still lethal (13 goals in 20 games). Add in the contributions from the usual suspects in Evgeny Kuznetsov, Tom Wilson, Nicklas Backstrom and T.J. Oshie — and the Capitals are once again poised to be a wagon in the Eastern Conference.

Even if Boston wasn't stuck in arguably its worst stretch of play under Cassidy's tenure, this weekend was going to be penciled in as a daunting task for this club. Now, with the pressure for two points at an all-time high, we should learn quite a bit about this Bruins team and their make-up in the face of adversity based on how they respond to two very tough opponents.

Thankfully for Cassidy, it doesn't look like his team is going to need much in terms of additional motivation.

"We’re going into Toronto and then playing Washington, so we’ve got two strong teams coming up," he said. "Hopefully our guys have a bit of burr in the saddle and want to get back in the win column."