The Bruins didn’t exactly light it up while losing their final two regular season games and falling behind the Florida Panthers to ultimately finish in second place in the Atlantic Division.
They finished by firing 23 shots on net in the third period of Tuesday night’s 3-1 loss to the Ottawa Senators at TD Garden, but five of the last six periods the Bruins played this season looked like an absolute slog through the mud.
The eventual defeat to Ottawa slotted them into a first-round playoff matchup with the Toronto Maple Leafs, once the division slotting was settled after Toronto’s 5-2 road loss to the Florida Panthers. That’s actually the best-case scenario for the Black and Gold as they will now host a Maple Leafs club that they’ve menaced in six straight playoff series wins dating all the way back to 1959, and in more recent times a Toronto team that they’ve beaten four straight times during the regular season.
Maple Leafs will square off against the Bruins in Round 1 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
— Sportsnet Stats (@SNstats) April 17, 2024
A team Toronto hasn't beaten in the postseason since 1959 pic.twitter.com/KQLlcXhHvo
The Bruins still didn’t know whether it was going to be the Maple Leafs or Lightning as a first-round opponent when they spoke to the media following Tuesday night’s loss, but they weren’t taking the bait about preferring one or another amid the uncertainty.
“Everything changes [in the playoffs], the pace is higher and there is more on the line. So we need to make sure we bring it,” said Brad Marchand. “It doesn't matter who it is [you're playing] through the entire playoffs, everybody is good. Everybody is in the playoffs for a reason. It doesn’t matter who you play, any team can win if you are not prepared to play.
“Both teams are very good. It’s not like you look at either [Tampa Bay or Toronto] and think they are going to be an easy matchup. It’s going to be tough regardless, but we’re excited. We earned a spot in the playoffs and an opportunity to win the Cup. That’s all you want at the start of the year, so we’re excited to get going.”
Maybe, just maybe No. 63 is truthfully a little more excited that it’s the Maple Leafs.
Ding ding. pic.twitter.com/EHkKTlaOWT
— Mike Grinnell (@MikeGrinnell_) April 17, 2024
The simple truth is that the Bruins played the final two regular season games like a hockey team that was totally okay with dropping into second place for a first-round playoff date against a high-octane Maple Leafs team that continues to struggle with postseason necessities like defense and goaltending.
No matter how you slice it, the Bruins will hold a massive goaltending advantage when slotting Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman alongside Joseph Woll and Ilya Samsonov. And that’s a big deal in the postseason when stable goaltending becomes hugely important.
In most playoff series the pressure would be on the Black and Gold as the higher seed and as a team that disappointed in the first round of the playoffs last season, but in this postseason series it is all on a Toronto “core four” of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, Morgan Rielly and William Nylander that have continuously disappointed in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Conversely, the Bruins will play a team that they defeated four out of four times this year during the regular season, outscored by a 14-7 margin in those games and get a chance to continue a playoff rivalry where Boston has been the hammer and Toronto has been the unwitting nail. Some will say that the Maple Leafs are due after years of torment by the Boston Bruins, and that will be the rallying cry for the Leafs.
"We're up for the challenge for any team," said Maple Leafs forward Nick Robertson to reporters in Florida. "When you get into playoffs, everyone changes. The desperation is the same whether we play Boston or Florida."
But they will be playing a goaltender in Swayman who finished with a 3-0-0 record, a 1.30 goals against average and a .959 save percentage in three games against Toronto this season. And a superstar in Pastrnak who finished with seven points (2 goals, 5 assists) in four games as he continues a career-long tradition of burying the Leafs and then talking smack to Justin Bieber on social media afterward.
David Pastrnak’s social-media crusade against Justin Bieber is my main takeaway from Game 7. pic.twitter.com/yMvAIC7JcR
— Conor Ryan (@ConorRyan_93) April 24, 2019
Perhaps even more encouraging is the 27:44 of strong defensive hockey that Hampus Lindholm averaged in the four wins over Toronto, and complimentary players like Jake DeBrusk, Pavel Zacha and Morgan Geekie stepping up to contribute offensively in those games. The bottom line, though, for all the Boston Bruins players is that the calendar has now turned to the best time of year for hockey players.
“I don’t care about what happened last year. We’ve played 82 games and now we’ve got the playoffs coming up,” said Ullmark. “It’s going to be fun, it’s going to be hard, it’s going to be tough and it’s going to be exciting.
“You’ve got to beat them all. That’s the way to win it all is to beat them all. We have a whole different group, new opportunities and a new opponent…everything like that. [It’s a] clean slate.”
On the other hand, Matthews fell short of 70 goals this season despite pouring it on to get the historical mark in the final two regular-season games, and both Toronto goalies Woll and Samsonov have struggled down the stretch as the Maple Leafs finished the season 20th in the NHL with 3.15 goals allowed per game. Only one playoff team finished lower than them in the NHL standings and that was a Tampa Bay Lightning club that missed Andrei Vasilevskiy for a big chunk of the regular season.
On paper this is setting up for a very advantageous first-round matchup for Boston between the well-rounded Bruins and the run-and-gun Maple Leafs, and perhaps the same in the second round facing off against a Panthers or Lightning club that’s been potentially beaten down after a first-round Battle of Florida matchup.
But the Bruins will have to do their part and be the best version of themselves in the Stanley Cup playoffs that they couldn’t muster up a postseason ago with a much deeper, more talented group on paper.