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.

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.