Boston Bruins: How Challenging Do We Want To Make This Summer?
By Luke Ryan
Today simply put was a crazy day of hockey and after the dust settled, we are one step closer to knowing who the Boston Bruins face in the first round.
The Boston Bruins may not have been playing today, but any hockey fan should’ve been hard-pressed not to enjoy the craziness of today.
As a Boston Bruins fan, the fact the Montreal Canadiens progressed isn’t met with approval necessarily, but as a sports fan, there’s always something nice about an underdog. To defeat the Pittsburgh Penguins was an impressive result, love them or hate them.
In some ways, it’s also done us a favor as it definitely rules out the Penguins as our first round opponent. Their regular season record made them one of the more daunting prospects.
Heading over to the Edmonton hub city and there definitely won’t be an home-ice advantage in the Western Conference. The Chicago Blackhawks as the lowest seed in the West pulled off the upset to send Connor McDavid and the Oilers packing.
In a match-up more relevant to the Boston Bruins, we found out that the New York Islanders are one of the teams we may face in the first round. The Florida Panthers were dispatched 5-1 in the fourth game of that series; Anthony Beauvillier notching two goals as the Islanders romped home.
Despite such a convincing win, the Islanders are the less scary team that we might face. It still took them four games to dispatch a Florida Panthers outfit that looked decidedly average, regardless of their big spend last summer.
The 13 goals that the Islanders tallied en-route to the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs mean that the Boston Bruins would need to play defensively the way they did in the regular season, rather than how they’ve been playing lately.
Although the result bears no relevance to our next round opponent, the crazy day was complete when the Toronto Maple Leafs, of all teams, managed to actually come back from three goals down. That’s right – come back!!
For the Bruins, it’s the Islanders or the Hurricanes in the first round and it’s completely on us now to pick which opponent.
Win against the Washington Capitals in our final round-robin game and it’s the Islanders. Lose and we have a Carolina Hurricanes team that looked much improved on the one we swept last season.
They blew the New York Rangers out of the water, sweeping their play-in series and managed to notch 11 goals despite playing one less game than the Islanders. Andrei Svechnikov and Sebastian Aho are looking scary good this summer.
It’s up to us now to decide how hard we want to make this.