Boston Bruins: Officially the best team in the NHL this season

With the regular season officially over, the Boston Bruins have been crowned the President’s Trophy winner.

The Boston Bruins are officially the best team in the NHL this season. Far from hinting towards future Stanely Cup success, the trophy has actually proven a curse in previous years, but looking beyond that, there’s plenty of reasons why we’re the best.

First and foremost, we’re the only team that topped the 100-point mark for the season. While this may not be the fairest measure due to the imbalance in games played, even on points percentage, we are the only team above 0.700%.

Our closest rival and last year’s Stanley Cup Final adversary, the St. Louis Blues had a points percentage of 0.662% compared to our elite 0.714%, when the season was suspended.

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In terms of goalscoring, we weren’t actually the league’s leading team – Tampa, Washington, Philadelphia, Toronto and even the lowly New York Rangers and Florida Panthers bettered us among Eastern Conference teams in that regard. For all their goalscoring though, very few even came close to our goal difference of +53.

In simple terms, we didn’t need to score as many as other teams because we were a lot less likely to give up goals against. The Lightning came close at +50 but conceded 21 more goals than us, showing just how strong we were when facing the puck.

Even factoring in the mismatch in games played, no team won (or could’ve won) more games and no team did so in regulation time more often than the Boston Bruins did, this regular season.

On an individual basis, only one other team features two players among the top ten scoring leaders in the league; that being the pairing of Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid for the Edmonton Oilers. David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand grabbed 95 and 87 points repectively; good for third and sixth on the scoring leaderboard.

Pastrnak also shone as the joint-winner of the Maurice ‘Rocket’ Richard Trophy as the league’s leading goal-scorer, matching Alex Ovechkin on 48 goals. He was surely on track for nearly sixty if the season hadn’t ended abruptly.

What’s more; Pastrnak and Marchand were backed up by three other players with other 40 points on the season; Patrice Bergeron grabbing 56, Torey Krug making it to 49 and David Krejci on 43 points.

This statistic is put into persepctive when you consider Oilers had the league’s leading two point scorers, yet only one further player topped 40 in Edmonton.

The Boston Bruins are the only team in the league with two goalies in the top ten for wins this season too, likewise goals against averages. Tuukka Rask will no doubt be a prime candidate for the Vezina Trophy, while Jaroslav Halak has already shared in the William M. Jennings Trophy with his counterpart this year.

Now, this all may end up counting for nothing if the Boston Bruins can’t get it done in the Stanley Cup, but given the strange nature of the secnario unfolding due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s fair to say that the Boston Bruins should be remembered as the best team this year, Cup or not.