The Boston Bruins will face off with an Anaheim Ducks side with a near-identical record thus far this season.
Not only have both the Boston Bruins and Anaheim Ducks won four games apiece, even their Goals For and Against are pretty close-on; Boston with 12 goals and 8 against, the Ducks with 11 goals and 6 against.
Safe to say with such statistically similar sides, we could be in for a very close encounter. Even comparing slightly more advanced stats like shots for and against, there’s little to separate the two; the Bruins with 154 shots and 165 against to Anaheim’s 146 and 156.
Perhaps the primary difference between the two sides is in the Expected Goals For percentage; the Ducks are running at 50.76%, whilst the Boston Bruins lag behind on 45.42%. In that sense, you’d expect the Ducks to win, but you could argue that’s where the goaltending hasn’t been accounted for.
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The Boston Bruins have been lucky enough to roll their pairing of Jaroslav Halak and Tuukka Rask evenly and have been rewarded with a shut-out from each. Should Halak start tonight, the fifty/fifty split of the pair will be maintained. Comparatively, tonight’s opponent has only given their backup Ryan Miller the one game; John Gibson takes on the majority of starts.
Whereas the Boston Bruins know to expect scoring (thus far this year) from Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak, both of whom maintain a better than point-per-game pace with 7 and 6 points respectively, the Ducks score slightly more by committee; Ondrej Kase and Hampus Lindholm have 4 points each but beyond that, it’s a mixed bag of scorers.
You’d have to be concerned if the Ducks find a way to stifle the Boston Bruins’ top line. With the trio of Marchand, Pastrnak and Patrice Bergeron accounting for 17 points thus far and no players other than Torey Krug and fourth line center Sean Kuraly having nabbed more than 2 points, it’s safe to say there is a way to beat us.
If the Bruins can force a powerplay or two, they’re a shoe-in to take the points; they may have given up more chances on the man advantage, but they’ve also been able to convert three goals.
Their opponent controls play much more effectively, seen in the fact they’ve allowed just 3 chances against, but haven’t converted once at the other end yet, despite seeing near identical power-play time.
Given the Boston Bruins’ penalty kill has conceded three times, you don’t really want to be spending time on the kill against a Ducks side that has been able to control possession and get chances on net.
This fixture could well be decided by the special teams and based on the analytics, it’s the Anaheim Ducks’ game to lose if it goes that way.
Last season, Halak took the net and put in a really dominant performance against a struggling Ducks side. Second period powerplay goals from Pastrnak and Krug proved too much to overcome as the Bruins took the points in a 3-1 win.
Viewing Information
Date: October 14th, 2019
Time: 13:00 EDT
Where: TD Garden
TV Broadcast: SN, NESN, PRIME
Live Streaming: NHL.tv (subscription required)
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We came away with a first home win and a shutout on Saturday night; let’s hope for a similar result just after lunch on Monday!