In Boston’s TD Garden for Game 7 of the Eastern Conference that should have been a firefight between first-round seat loyalists the hometown Bruins and barely made it into the postseason, the Florida Panthers got fired up, uh-hah-hah-hah in Bitta . 135-point Gators in the regular season. A record 65 regular-season wins, 135 points, and a 22-point margin for the second best pre-playoff team made a series against the Panthers look like a cakewalk on paper. And later Carter Verheeghe’s overtime wrist shot Cleanly over his left shoulder and under the crossbar after beating replacement goaltender Jeremy Swayman, David Pasternak, and his buddies can start practicing his golf swing. And if history is any indicator, that’s a good thing for Boston.
No, I’m not drunk on Sam Adams or whatever was thrown in Habbah during the Revolutionary War. the only recent comparison example Bruins Team of the Year Was 2018-19 Lightning. Tampa Bay had 128 points to end the regular season, 21 better than the next best team. The Lightning finished the regular season and their overall campaign with 62 wins. That’s right, for those who were/are actually addicted to Sam Adams, cheers, and welcome to Deadspin! In addition, Tampa Bay was swept by the Blue Jackets in the first round. And most of those four games weren’t close. The next time Tampa lost a playoff series was 10 months earlier. There was extreme disappointment after two straight Stanley Cup wins and the Avalanche’s runner-up finish. And Boston was a lucky bounce during the series from bouncing off the Panthers after the season.
A Look at Boston’s Future
There’s no reason Boston can’t replicate Tampa’s model, even with the uncertainty of whether Patrice Bergeron played his final NHL game, and the question in net. The Bruins loaded up before the trade deadline and putting together the core of the team should be easy. And whatever the pieces move, there are no more attractive cities for an NHL player to play in. the postseason is a crapshoot As it is Going into a team guaranteed to be in playoff festivities next season should allow Boston to bring in any number of players. One of the players the Bruins need to keep is defender Dmitry Orlov, who was acquired at the trade deadline. Orlov’s slap shot at the end of the third period clipped the shoulder blades of Florida goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky and the post. Maybe a centimeter in a different direction and Boston takes a late two-goal lead and moves on to face Toronto in the Eastern Conference semi-finals.
1st round exit from Boston Shocking in a postseason that looks like a changing of the guard in the Eastern Conference when three of the remaining four teams on their side of the bracket could be Florida, Toronto and New Jersey after Monday evening, as everyone predicted. A year after Tampa was knocked out of the playoffs in the first round, and old standards Washington and Pittsburgh didn’t advance to the postseason, they weren’t crapping their pants. The Bruins’ defeat on Sunday may have been short-lived, but in the long run it has proved to be of great consequence.