by Joe Ballway
Editorial. Photos by AP News
A ten-game losing streak. The league’s second-worst offense. Seemingly millions of man-games lost to injury.
The reigning Vezina winner, once a fan favorite, relegated to bench-warming duties and booed off the ice in his final home start. The captain and defending Norris winner, long hailed as a snarling shutdown force, called out for his lack of leadership and made a scapegoat for the team’s pussification.
The reigning coach of the year, once seen as the defensive genius responsible for the franchise’s turnaround–well, most of us wanted his head on a platter by midseason.
Oh yea, and Dennis Wideman. And Michael Ryder.
And Matt f-ing Cooke.
All that, and. . . the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs?
Not bad for a nightmare season–not bad at all. With all the bitching and moaning us mercurial Boston fans have been doing (and are still doing, I suppose), you would’ve thought the Bruins were in dead last–and trust me, it did seem that way for much of the season. But a minor hot streak and a few lucky breaks later, they’re in the clear.
In large part, we can thank a weak Eastern Conference for that.
So, instead of the early tee time that seemed inevitable for so many miserable stretches, the Bruins are headed for the luxurious, sunny confines of Buffalo, New York, for a first-round showdown with their divisional rivals.
Now, here’s 5 questions for Bruins fans to ponder heading into what should be a very tough series:
1. Is there any hope for the power play?
Backed by the heroics of all-world netminder Ryan Miller, the Sabres penalty kill clicked at 86.6% efficiency in the regular season, good for second in the NHL.
Conversely, Boston’s power play sputtered along at a conversion rate of 16.6%, placing them 23rd in the league–and most of those goals came before Marc Savard hit the shelf in early March.
Since then, if you subtract an aberrational three-goal outburst against Calgary, the Bruins have scored just twice on the man-advantage in 18 games. On most nights, the power play seems to follow an exact pattern: bring the puck into the zone, set up on the perimeter, lose the puck to a block or poke check, retrieve it from the defensive end, repeat. I couldn’t even count how many times the Bruins failed to register a shot on net with the extra man over the past month or so.
The bottom line is that they look completely lost on the man-advantage without their top playmaking center–like “Mite F” bad, or Mighty-Ducks-before-Gordon-Bombay bad. Unless slick centers David Krejci and Patrice Bergeron can start creating more space and wingers like
Milan Lucic and Mark Recchi can improve their physical net-front presence, the Buffalo penalty-killing unit will be an extremely tough egg for them to crack.
2) What role will injuries play in the series?
The Bruins’ issues with injuries have been well documented: Savard is done for the year, as is trade deadline acquisition Dennis Seidenberg, and Zdeno Chara continues to play through a broken pinkie finger. Defenseman Mark Stuart, also out with a fractured pinkie, is questionable for the start of the series.
Luckily for the Bruins, the Sabres have been decimated by injury as well, especially on offense. Three of their top six forwards–Tim Connolly, Jochen Hecht and Drew Stafford–are questionable to return in the first round. While the Bruins know what to expect from themselves,
since they have been playing through health issues all year, it will be interesting to see how much offense Buffalo can muster with so many key cogs recently hitting the shelf.
3) Who are the X-factors for the Bruins?
Obviously, Tuukka Rask will be under plenty of pressure to perform in his first-ever postseason appearance, and all eyes are on Dennis Wideman to give fans a reason to forget his dreadful regular season.
But I’m more interested in which forwards can step up their game, with the
offense facing an uphill climb against Miller–and I’m looking at the wingers in If this were 2004, the Bruins would have the NHL’s highest-scoring rookie, a point-per-game player, an up-and-coming German speedster and a perennial 30-goal scorer patrolling the wings.
But it’s 2010–duh–and Ryder, Recchi, Marco Sturm and Miroslav Satan are all showing their age, having since morphed into a jumble of past-their-prime supplementary players who suffer through extensive scoring droughts and spend far too many of their shifts resembling oversized pylons. Combine them with Lucic and Blake Wheeler, both of whom are young and inconsistent, and the Bruins have a core of six very interchangeable players that can’t seem to find their place or their game.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t potential for a few of them to step up in the playoffs. Ryder emerged from his regular-season reverie at the last possible opportunity, scoring more goals in the finale against Washington (two) than he had in his previous 20 contests (one). And, lest we forget, he was the Bruins’ best forward against Montreal in the first round last year, so there’s always the possibility he’ll step it up under the right circumstances.
Milan Lucic and Miroslav Satan also finished the season on a high note; Lucic scored four points in his final four games, and Satan showed promising chemistry on a line centered by Krejci, potting three goals in his final five games.
The Bruins will especially need Lucic to step up
his physical game against Buffalo, as the space he creates with his freight-train body checks has led to innumerable scoring opportunities in the past. Look for the offense to depend on those three guys to emerge from the doldrums and complement Krejci and Bergeron, who have carried the load offensively for the Bruins all season.
4) Could this be the start of a rivalry?
No playoff series is complete without a bevy of post-whistle scrums, borderline hits and late-game melees. This one should be no exception; not only are the Bruins and Sabres division rivals, but each team boasts its share of physically engaging players. On the Sabres’ back end, Craig Rivet and Steve Montador won’t shy away from the tough stuff, while Chara and Stuart–should he return from injury–are more than capable of holding their own.
Buffalo forwards Adam Mair and Patrick Kaleta, two of the dirtier little rats in the league, will get under the Bruins’ skin all series long, so it will be interesting to see if Shawn Thornton will deliver any beatdowns, or if Lucic will find himself a new Mike Komisarek to tango with.
This series doesn’t quite carry the hype of a Canadiens-Bruins showdown, but you can expect lots of hitting, lots of whining, and lots of hate to develop between these two teams. And, while Sabres fans aren’t quite as delusional and obnoxious as Canadiens fans, Buffalo is basically in
Canada, so that’s close enough for me.
5) Can the Bruins pull off the upset?
Many people seem to feel that the Bruins lucked out in landing the Sabres–frequently characterized as a one-dimensional team riding the coattails of a great goaltender–as their first-round opponent. Looking around at the likes of ESPN.com and Yahoo! Sports, Boston is a trendy
first-round upset pick.
While an upset is a distinct possibility, I really think that experts have underscored Buffalo’s capabilities as a fast, young team. It’s certainly true that the Bruins seem to elevate their play when facing Buffalo–they went 4-2 against them in the regular season, and each loss came by a goal. Rask was the main reason for his team’s success against the Sabres, allowing just six goals on 145 shots in five appearances.
But he’ll need to continue standing on his head should the Bruins hope to advance. I can promise you that, on the other end, Miller will be on top of his game, and the beleaguered and inconsistent Bruins offensive corps that has so sorely lacked a go-to guy all season long will have a difficult time putting more than a couple of goals past him per game.
There is certainly hope, but if the Bruins drop both games to open the series, or if Tuukka falters in any way, shape, or form–forget about it.
My official prediction: Buffalo in 6.
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