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.
Let’s see how close to the 100% marker the Boston Bruins can get through the next five!