Boston Bruins: How does their 5 game pace look after 5 games?
An NHL season is a marathon, not a sprint, hence we’re breaking the Boston Bruins campaign down into five-game chunks to see how they’re tracking.
It’s arguable that no team has had a tougher starting schedule than the Boston Bruins. Starting on the road has to happen for half the teams in the league, sure.
Starting with four consecutive road games and against some strong Western Conference teams; that’s a rough way to start the season. Or perhaps, in the Boston Bruins’ case it’s actually the perfect way to start the year.
In going to Dallas, Arizona, Las Vegas and Colorado and coming away with a 75% winning record, you could argue that the hard start was actually perfect for them.
Not only has it allowed a team that bonded over the misery of a Game 7 loss in the Stanley Cup Final last summer, but it’s allowed them to spend the first week of this new year on the road hanging out as opposed to going back to their own homes and families each night.
Perhaps, the scheduling in that sense is an absolute blessing in disguise. They’ve also gotten some tough teams out of the way early on when everyone is still finding their feet and ironing out any issues with new systems or summer acquisitions.
They say to make the playoffs, you need to approach every five-game stint in the NHL season with the intention of taking away at least 60% of the points which translates over the course of a whole season to roughly 98 points.
That works perfectly when you look at last season’s Eastern Conference standings; the Columbus Blue Jackets got in as the second wild-card team with 98, whereas the Montreal Canadiens just missed out on 96.
The year before 97 points were enough for the New Jersey Devils and Columbus to tie up the wild-card spots, so you see it’s a very finite margin. Anyhow, how are the Boston Bruins looking in that regard after the first set of five games?
Points from all but one game
The Boston Bruins frankly are ahead of where they need to be. If they’re aiming for six points every five games, they already have two points in reserve and can afford an extra loss somewhere along the line. Not that we want them to have that extra loss, just they have that safety net already.
In taking away 8 points out of 10; they’re on pace for a 131-point season. Obviously, they’re more likely to have some significant peaks and troughs in their performances between now and April next year, but were they able to maintain their form, that’s where they’d be.
Given the elite performance of the Tampa Bay Lightning on their way to the Presidents’ Trophy last season saw them tally 128 points, it’s rather absurd to even suggest that 131 is an achievable target.
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Realistically, the Boston Bruins’ current pace points-wise is going to come back down to Earth and level out; we should hope for a 6.5 to 7 point average every five games if we want a definite assurance of making the play-offs.
With the improvements we saw across multiple Atlantic Division teams this summer, it’s possible that’s the level we need to be playing at to 100% ensure that the playoffs are a thing again in 2020.
Looking at our goalscoring, we’ve managed to score 12 goals thus far, translating to 2.4 goals per game. Current Altantic Division leaders after five, the Buffalo Sabres by comparison average 4.2 goals per game right now.
Where we out-do most of our rivals is our ability not to concede; Buffalo may be scoring at will, but they’re conceding at a rate of 2.6 goals per game meaning they have to out-score their issues.
The Boston Bruins have 2 shut-outs in their five games thus far and are conceding a full goal less on average at just 1.6 goals against per game.
What about our players; what sort of pace are they at five games in?
What pace are individuals at?
The Boston Bruins’ leading scorer early on, unsurprisingly is Brad Marchand. His 4 goals and 3 assists are boosted by an incredibly 30.8 shooting percentage, that will undoubtedly deflate over time.
If he were able, to maintain his goalscoring, we’re talking about a 65-goal season and a further 49 assists. That’d make for a 114-point campaign.
Two consecutive 85-point seasons followed by last year’s 100-point year certainly suggest that such a number wouldn’t be entirely out of the question. Obviously, it coming in such fashion as 65 goals is maybe a little unlikely.
Also off to a hot start is David Pastrnak; his 6 points thus far have him on pace for a 98-point season. Such an idea, again, doesn’t seem ridiculously far-fetched. Last year he struggled through some injury issues, but still managed 81 points in his 66 appearances. If you break that out across a full 82 games, we’re talking 100 points.
Finally, looking towards the goaltending tandem of Tuukka Rask and Jaroslav Halak. Last season, they practically split the net 50/50. Obviously using a 5 game marker as the benchmark means that unless neither played, one is always going to have a slight lead on the other in terms of starts, hence why Rask has 3 starts to Halak’s 2.
Using this one five-game stint as the benchmark, we project 49 starts for Rask to 33 starts for Halak. Obviously this is likely to even out a little more heading into the next five games, but as it stands, that still means the Boston Bruins should have two relatively fresh and healthy goalies come crunch time.
All in all, this first set of five has been near-perfect. Unfortunately two goals being waved off in Colorado is the only difference between a perfect record and a near-perfect one.
Grading the Bruins through the first five. dark. Next
Let’s see how close to the 100% marker the Boston Bruins can get through the next five!