Boston Bruins: 3 Deciding Factors In First Round Victory
The Boston Bruins have advanced to the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs with a 4-1 series win over the Carolina Hurricanes.
It’s been a series that hasn’t been without its own set of challenges. The Boston Bruins had to deal with their number one goaltender Tuukka Rask packing his bags and heading home after two games.
They also lost their regular season leading goalscorer in David Pastrnak for three games. Needless to say though, they faced up to the adversity and eventually took the series.
After two games, you sensed that the series was definitely anyone’s game. However, this is where the Boston Bruins shone and demonstrated much greater play-off experience. Matching up to the relative youth and inexperience of the Canes, the Bruins were just too much.
Most heartening was the performance of Jaroslav Halak, when he unexpectedly was pushed into the spotlight. He has carried the team to three wins in his three games and although not perfect, he definitely looked better than the Carolina goalies.
Heading into the second round, it’s still anyone’s guess who we’ll actually be facing. There are several different scenarios that could play out, leading to a different opponent.
Should the Montreal Canadiens continue with their comeback and overhaul the Philadelphia Flyers, we face the winner of the New York Islanders and Washington Capitals series. However, if Philly comes out on top, we face them should Washington win or Tampa Bay if the New York Islanders win.
Whoever we face though, we have no doubt that the deciding factors in the next round will be similar to the first:
Special Teams
We touched on this one part way through this series. The Boston Bruins’ performances on the man-advantage and on the penalty kill ultimately decided the series.
The Boston Bruins netted 5 powerplay goals across the series and conceded once. They also added a further 2 goals on the penalty-kill, while only allowing the Canes to take advantage on their power-play opportunities twice.
Spending 33:25 playing 5-on-4 on the powerplay, the Boston Bruins averaged a goal for roughly every 6 and a half minutes spent with the man-advantage.
Heading into the series, the Bruins’ were the second-best team on the power-play in the regular season, though it’s fair to say a lot of their production was coming from David Pastrnak.
When he went down injured after Game 1, you might’ve expected the worst and figured the team may suffer at 5-on-4 as a result. This didn’t appear to be the case. Both goals in the clinching Game 5 came from the Bruins’ powerplay unit, with Pastrnak grabbing primary assists on both which highlighted his importance to the team.
In fairness though, it was Brad Marchand and David Krejci leading the charge in his absence. Krejci played a hand in both goals in that final game too, let’s not forget.
Far from just relying on the powerplay though, the Boston Bruins took advantage on the penalty-kill with the likes of Charlie Coyle and Sean Kuraly properly stepping up to limit a team that certainly has some strong offensive threats with an extra man.
It was a real team effort all round from all special team units, especially when you realise how close the series at even-strength actually was. When you remove special team scoring and only look at the teams at even-strength, they’re very tightly matched at 9-8.
Secondary Scoring
When you look beyond the powerplay goals we scored in this series, it’s clear that we had less reliance on our top line than we sometimes do.
Our regular top line played together just twice through the series and between them came away with 4 goals and 4 assists, which is not a bad return.
However, as is often proven the case in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, teams need to find scoring beyond their top group. The Boston Bruins managed this with players finding form at the right time.
Leading the charge was a resurgent Jake DeBrusk, who is steadily increasing his contract renewal cost. At even-strength, he had 2 goals, while his regular center David Krejci chipped in with a goal and 2 assists.
The second line showed amazing newfound chemistry with Ondrej Kase, who put up 3 assists; rightfully, that line should be labelled our stand-out group for the series.
Charlie Coyle, ever the playoff performer, stepped up with an even-strength goal, while Connor Clifton had a cracking game in Game 4, adding a goal and assist.
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Chris Wagner, Charlie McAvoy, Joakim Nordstom and Torey Krug all chipped in with assists too.
Let’s also not forget, Sean Kuraly picked up a shorthanded goal, Charlie Coyle had one on the man-advantage and David Krejci was a beast with 2 goals and 3 assists on the powerplay.
This series demonstrated that the Boston Bruins don’t wholly need to rely upon Bergeron, Marchand and Pastrnak to get the points. They still managed to tally a good few, but the rest of the team chipped in and it made a huge difference to the series result.
Charlie McAvoy
Naming just one player is always a bold call, especially when we’re looking at the deciding factors across a whole series, but it’s impossible to overlook the value that Charlie McAvoy brought to the Boston Bruins.
Since the start of the Stanley Cup Playoffs tournament, Charlie McAvoy seems to have taken another step forward in his game and is looking close to elite, if not elite.
Whereas it used to be a relatively even and balanced partnership between Zdeno Chara and McAvoy, the younger of that pairing is by far the more able now. In fact, Chara is unfortunately looking less and less like even a third-pairing NHL defenseman these days.
Across this series, Charlie McAvoy was the only member of the Boston Bruins to top more than 100 minutes of even-strength ice time with a total of 112:25. To put that in context, next on that list is Matt Grzelyck with a meagre (by comparison) 89:43.
Simply put, McAvoy is playing the minutes that used to be reserved for Chara. Not only that, but he’s doing it really well. At even strength, he had a Corsi For of 52.38%, Fenwick For of 52.66% and Shots For sitting at 57.02%.
All of these three analytics represent a defenseman that did a great job of ensuring the Canes didn’t spend too much time on the puck. More importantly, they were limited to not getting too many chances on the Boston Bruins net.
It feels like he’s blossomed overnight, from a very good young defenseman to the leader of the Boston Bruins defensive group, playing a style perfectly suited to the demands of the modern NHL.
Of course, we also have a bias for a player that lays hits like the one that put the Canes’ captain, Jordan Staal on his rear.
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All in all, the Boston Bruins deserved their series win. These three key factors were but a few that ultimately resulted in victory over the Canes. Now to see who we draw next?
Statistics courtesy of Natural Stat Trick.