Boston Bruins: How long until Tampa Bay hunt us down in the Atlantic race?

4 games and only 3 points for the Boston Bruins this week. Luckily for them, that was the exact scorecard for the Tampa Bay Lightning too.

The Boston Bruins, remarkably, have held top spot in the Atlantic Division and indeed for stages, top spot in the NHL for most of the current season.

Despite this year being widely talked about as another year of Tampa Bay Lightning dominance and the year that the Toronto Maple Leafs take the next step or Joel Quenneville works his magic with the Panthers, even the Buffalo Sabres turning the corner; it has largely looked like a sure-thing that the Boston Bruins will be heading comfortably to the play-offs once more.

A lot of the team’s success obviously rests solely on the shoulders of Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak, who between them have tallied just under 35% of all the goals the Boston Bruins have scored this season.

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Likewise; Tuukka Rask, Jaroslav Halak and the team’s collective defensive effort is something that many of our rivals could only dream of. The Boston Bruins have given up a lowly 2.52 goals per game, ranking 3rd in the league having only allowed 126 goals this season.

How exactly does this equate to the notion that the Tampa Bay Lightning will catch us before season end?

In our last 10 games, we have a record of 4-3-3 whereas Tampa are sitting pretty with an 8-2-0 record, having truly found their stride. That record, just three games ago, was in fact a perfect 10 from their last 10. Safe to say they’re surging.

In 5 of their last 10 games, they’ve scored 4 or more goals, managing 9 against the Vancouver Canucks and 7 most recently against the Winnipeg Jets. Not only are they winning games, but they are scoring at will.

What we can take heart from though is that three of those games we only one-goal wins and not complete blow-out scorelines. They clearly can be stopped and the tide of goals can be stemmed.

In terms of catching the Boston Bruins; if we were to continue as we are with the exact same form over the next 10 games, which actually seems entirely plausible given our lack of ability to maintain leads of late; we’d come away with 8 points, especially if we continue our dreadful shoot-out form.

Tampa Bay, on the other hand would be looking at 16 points. With the gap between us and them only currently being 6 points, and with them also having two games in hand, it’s safe to say our current form needs to be fixed. They’d only be ahead by 2 points based on this simple maths, but with the two extra games, it could easily push out to a six-point lead.

It’s easy to look at their upcoming fixtures and suggest they’ve got a challenging road schedule ahead, but in all reality, the California road-trip no longer holds true as the scary prospect it once was. Facing the Anaheim Ducks and Los Angeles Kings certainly don’t induce that much panic or fear anymore.

Our schedule is also relatively friendly; there’s no one team that stands out as a scary, scary beast especially since we’ve gotten done with the Pittsburgh Penguins pair of games and actually came away with 2 points.

Whichever way you look at it; whether by their schedule or by ours, I think it’s inevitable that the Tampa Bay Lightning will climb above us in the Atlantic Division.

The big question is whether they can maintain it for the rest of the season or whether the Boston Bruins will truly show them what we’re made of.