Boston Bruins: David Pastrnak slowly edging towards history
Nobody really needs to be told but David Pastrnak is slowly edging towards Boston Bruins’ history.
Even if this season were to end tomorrow, David Pastrnak would already have the 17th best goal-scoring season in Boston Bruins’ history. No player has reached that milestone since Cam Neely topped 50 goals in the 1993-94 season.
51 goals, which is just 6 more this season will put him in the top ten all-time Boston Bruins’ goal-scorers. His five-game pace certainly points to him managing this feat; in the last five, he’s scored 4 goals, not like he’s struggling to score.
If David Pastrnak is able to maintain the pace he’s scored at all season, not only is he getting into the top-ten but the 13 goals he’s on pace to score will put him on 58 for the season.
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That would literally put just one Boston Bruins player in history between him and the greatest goal-scoring season this franchise has seen. Unfortunately, that player, Phil Esposito holds the top four spots in terms of goals per season and unless Pastrnak breaks the 60-goal marker is untouchable.
It’s a safe bet that his points tally come season end will be a top twenty all-time tally also. Brad Marchand‘s 100-point season last year ranks him 24th all-time, but the gap to 20th is just 3 points; the 103-point tally belonging to Rick Middleton back in the 1980-81 season.
From there, it’s a case of seeing just how high the points total can climb for Pastrnak; Adam Oates in fifteenth all-time for the Boston Bruins with a 112-point season certainly seems like a stretch right now, but a couple of big games and it’s perfectly reachable.
Since the Maurice Richard Trophy started being awarded back in the 1998-99 season, no Boston Bruins player has ever won it; that’s another little bit of individual history that David Pastrnak could very well be celebrating by season’s end.
Perhaps the greatest nod for Pastrnak is the fact that even when the team loses games, he typically has found the score-sheet, more often than not finding the net too. Just look to the 9-3 defeat in Vancouver; two of our three goals were his.
Far more than just having great numbers, David Pastrnak is slowly carving out a role as one of the great right-wingers in the game. He still seems undervalued across the league, but his shot from the hash-marks is as good as Alex Ovechkin on any given day. That is no exaggeration either.
At just 23 years old, David Pastrnak is already the twenty-second highest goal-scoring Boston Bruins player in the team’s entire history. Safe to say that he will break records before his career is over.
Next. The good, the bad and the ugly versus Vancouver. dark
For all these individuals honors and nods though, you’d be almost certain that he would trade it all in for the Stanley Cup last season. That’s what is fuelling this year and I can’t see Pastrnak giving up scoring until he’s reached that pinnacle.