BRIGHTON, Mass – One of the failings of the loss to the Florida Panthers in the regular-season finale was the inability of the Bruins to avoid a tough first-round matchup with the Toronto Maple Leafs, so now, the B’s have their work cut out for them.
The Leafs took three out of four games from the Bruins in the regular season and have given the B's issues defensively the past couple of seasons with the speed, skill and game-breaking ability that Toronto has up front. To wit, in the past two seasons, Zdeno Chara is a minus-2 against the Leafs and Torey Krug is a minus-7 against Toronto since guys named Matthews, Marner and Nylander were added to the Leafs mix.
Last season, Toronto won all four games against the Bruins and clearly gives Boston matchup challenges and all that they can handle. That’s not something the B’s were shying away from when talking about the first-round rematch of the 2013 playoffs, when Boston needed a historic, third-period comeback in Game 7 to take the series.
“Quality hockey club. They play with a lot of speed, so we’ve got our work cut out for us from top to bottom,” said Bruins general manager Don Sweeney. “They’ve got depth, they’ve got scoring ability. It’s going to be a big challenge [because] they’re a quality hockey club.”
Even more concerning, the Leafs won all three of those games against Boston with franchise center Auston Matthews out of the lineup for Toronto. Instead, it was Mitch Marner that did major damage against the Bruins with nine points in the four games against the Black and Gold this season, and an impressive 13 points in eight games against Boston over the last two seasons.
The Leafs defense is fairly average for a playoff team and goalie Frederik Andersen has had his moments both good and bad the past two seasons, so there are most definitely areas for the Black and Gold to exploit. Still, the Bruins haven’t been able to consistently, effectively do it against Toronto the past couple of years. That will be the challenge if the B's want to live up to the potential they showed as a 50-win team.
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The other area where the Bruins hold a distinct advantage over the Leafs: A much more accomplished, veteran core group that surrounds their constellation of young stars David Pastrnak, Charlie McAvoy, Ryan Donato, Jake DeBrusk and Danton Heinen. That’s something the Bruins really plan on leveraging with Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, David Krejci, Zdeno Chara and Adam McQuaid all being able to draw on multiple runs to the Stanley Cup Final over their careers.
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“I think that [Toronto is] a team that plays fast and plays with energy and they’ve got a ton of skill and young talent on their team. We have a lot of young talent on our team too, but maybe that core group of guys that’s been there and done that in the playoffs, made deep runs, a couple to the Finals...one where they hoisted the Cup,” said David Backes. “We need to use that experience and how we play in the playoffs, every single game play matters, and is magnified and can be the difference between winning and losing the game.
“That’s the mentality we need to have. We need to have that urgency for 60 minutes or 80 minutes. Playoffs can go well longer than that into the wee hours of the morning. However long it takes, we need to stick with our game plan. We have plenty of ability in this room to get the job done.”
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That’s the bottom line for the Bruins. All April swoons aside, the Bruins can legitimately harbor realistic hopes of a long playoff run and that means being equipped to defeat any challengers along the way. They have the talent to defeat the Leafs even if it’s the more difficult road and even if it hasn’t happened pretty much at all for Boston vs. Toronto the past couple of regular seasons.