Ryan: Playoff seedings will mean little to this Bruins club if it doesn't start finding some answers soon

In most NHL campaigns, a Stanley Cup contender plummeting from the top spot in its conference down to the No. 4 seed under a week would be viewed as a catastrophic turn of events. 

Of course, this isn’t like most seasons — and such sentiment was evidently clear as the Bruins spoke at the podium following Wednesday’s 3-2 loss to the Lightning in round-robin play.

With Wednesday’s loss at the hands of a Steven Stamkos-less Tampa team, the Bruins — the lone club to eclipse the 100-point mark at the time of the NHL’s months-long pause — saw their standing atop the Eastern Conference leaderboard collapse underneath them.

Now with zero points accrued through the first two games of round-robin action, Boston's ability to claw itself out of the current pit it dug for itself is fairly limited.

The highest Boston can now advance is the No. 3 seed, for which the B's are going to need the Capitals — yes, the same club that has won 16 of its last 18 meetings against Boston — to either lose/only gain one point against the Flyers on Thursday evening before beating Washington themselves on Sunday. 

If not, the Bruins will advance as the lowest seed among the top dogs in the East, setting the stage for Bruce Cassidy's club to wade into the playoff waters with a first-round bout against ... Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and No. 5 seed Pittsburgh Penguins.

Not good. Not good at all.

"Well that part sucks, I’m not going to lie to you," Cassidy said postgame. "But, that’s the situation this year with the stoppage of play.

Now, in this revamped playoff tournament, seeding is not nearly as vital to a club's playoff hopes as it usually is. Yes, holding on to last change for the majority of a seven-game series gives you a leg up, but with home-ice advantage and the usual lift provided by a raucous barn negated during this postseason slate, the usual perks most contenders rely on over the course of two-plus months of playoff action have fallen to the wayside this summer.

"If you want to make a run in the playoffs you have to beat every team anyways," Tuukka Rask said. "The situation is what it is. I think the worst case that’s going to happen is we’re going to lose the locker room in our practice rink so that’s about it. I really don’t care where we finish. We just have to focus on our game and try to improve that come Sunday and going into next week. You got to beat everybody anyways, so whatever."

"We knew the rules going into it," Cassidy added. "That we would lose a bit of the advantage we’d gained. We are where we are now. We’re just trying to win a hockey game right now, get our game together for 60 minutes so that we can be at our best so that whoever we meet – this is one year I do believe the seeding is less relevant than others."

Are they right? I mean,  yeah, sure. I guess. It's already a foolhardy move to predict which club is truly going to strike gold on the outset of any Stanley Cup run, this year especially.

So yeah, the Bruins aren't dwelling too much over their current drop in the Eastern Conference standings. That's good news, because based on what we've seen so far up in Toronto, there's a whole lot that this roster should fretting over than who they play in the following round.

Was Wednesday's loss a step in the right direction for this team? Of course.

But considering the results put forth in their previous outings against Columbus and Philadelphia, the Bruins had pretty much nowhere else to go but up on Wednesday night. 

Against arguably their biggest obstacle on the road back to the Stanley Cup Final, the Bruins came just 1:27 away from at least forcing overtime against the Bolts and securing at least one point in the standings. A small victory, yes, but one that would be welcome after the malaise of Boston's first few matchups north of the border.

But for a Bruins team that has prioritized building their own game and fine-tuning their roster over the past week in game action, Wednesday's result offers far more questions than reassurances for when these contests truly have consequences.

Boston, who has not led for a single second of the 180 minutes of action it's logged so far during Phase 4 play, generated two goals on Wednesday night — equaling the offensive output put forth in its last two games up in Toronto. One came off the stick of the club's leading goal scorer so far during this reset — fourth-line regular Chris Wagner — while the opening salvo came by way of Charlie McAvoy shortly off a faceoff win from Patrice Bergeron. 

Whereas the "Mayor of Walpole" and the rest of Boston's bottom-six scrappers have been pulling their weight on offense by funneling pucks down low, the Bruins' expected big guns up front have largely been firing blanks.

David Pastrnak at least seemed to get Cassidy's memo when it came to firing more pucks on net, with the B's top sniper attempting 16 (!) total shots during Wednesday's loss. As such, the overall puck-possession metrics involving the 63-37-88 line look rather good following this outing, with Boston holding the edge in shot attempts (14-10), shots on goal (6-3) and obviously goals (1-0) during that trio's 10:39 of 5v5 ice time together.

But beyond their contributions on McAvoy's slapper tally from the blue line, that line — as a unit — hasn't all been on the ice together for a 5v5 goal scored since Phase 4 play began. (Pastrnak's tally against Columbus was during a counter-rush led by Sean Kuraly.)

Since primarily getting matched up against both Sean Couturier and Anthony Cirelli's lines over the last week, the "Perfection Line" has been outscored, 2-1, since beginning play up in Toronto. Not what you want to see out of a grouping that Boston needs to deliver come next week.

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Things only get more concerning the further down the lineup you go.

Does Nick Ritchie bring value to this Bruins' forward corps? Of course he does. His size and snarl are going to come in handy for the many post-whistle scraps and scrums that await in the coming weeks. But does Ritchie fit in next to a playmaking pivot like David Krejci?

Based on the underlying numbers, I'd say no — with Tampa Bay generating four high-danger scoring chances during the 11:12 of 5v5 ice time that the revamped grouping of Krejci, Ritchie and Karson Kuhlman skated together on Wednesday. Through the last two games, Krejci, still a man without a set of reliable wingers, has generated a 39.58% shot share — with opponents holding a 29-19 edge in shot attempts when Boston's second-line center is out on the ice.

With just one game remaining between now and legitimate playoff hockey, Boston's potential last hope in terms of resurrecting that top-six group lies in Ondrej Kase. A shot-first winger with tons of talent — but not a whole lot in terms of legitimate reps (six games played back in March) with his new club. No pressure, man.

For as much as the pairing of Charlie Coyle and Anders Bjork has offered plenty of promise on the third line, those that push analytics (including yours truly) could only defend puck-possession talents like these two forwards for so long before you can no longer ignore the lack of finish that has frustratingly lingered on that line. At this point, it doesn't appear as though Jake DeBrusk, skating at right wing Wednesday night, is the answer, with the ice-cold skater generating zero shots on goal and scoring chances in 16 minutes of 5v5 play.

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Add in a few very uncharacteristic defensive lapses from usual blue-line stalwarts like Zdeno Chara and Brandon Carlo, and you have a Bruins club that — despite still obviously loaded with talent — has only one game remaining to both solve a lineup puzzle that has stalled out its middle-six forward corps and spark a top line and power-play unit that has to get humming again.

Are the Bruins panicking? Almost certainly not. Even though their stock has dropped since hockey resumed last week, this is still a veteran roster with the moxie and talent to flip the switch in a hurry, regardless of what seed they're saddled with.

"Would I have rather been number one seed? Absolutely, keep it," Cassidy said. "That’s not going to happen so like I said, we’ll get ready for Washington and play the best game we can and like I said, prepare for the postseason. That’s our ultimate goal, we have to win 16 games. We knew that going in. That will still be our goal."

But if these challenges and question marks up front don't start yielding some solutions, forget about those 16 wins. The Bruins will be lucky to push whatever club awaits them next to seven games — regardless of where their current free-fall places them in the NHL's new playoff bracket.