It’s honestly difficult to exaggerate the Boston Bruins’ current run of dominance because they’re handing out Bunyan-esque beatings to opposing teams with such startling regularity.
Normally, you’d expect a little let-up on the tail end of back-to-back games, especially after the Bruins bludgeoned the New Jersey Devils 6-1 last night. Instead, that beating seemed like a mere warm-up as Boston humiliated the Calgary Flames by a resounding score of 9-0 tonight. As Brian Compton points out, the Bruins have score 15 unanswered goals since New Jersey went up 1-0 on Wednesday.
Will the fun continue?
Logically speaking, the Bruins won’t be able to blow out teams to such a ridiculous degree all season long. If nothing else, they’ve managed to stay very healthy aside from a banged up Zdeno Chara here or there. Their rough-and-tumble style could result in some more injuries, at least if logic shows up to the party.
That - plus the natural gravitational pull of regression - should keep things from getting too ridiculous.
Still, the remarkable thing about the Bruins is their depth. Tyler Seguin’s far-from-shocking rise has given Boston an enviable offensive arsenal, especially in the salary cap era.
The scoring burden can pass from Seguin’s line to the Lucic-Krejci-Horton trio while Patrice Bergeron is rising to a near-elite level among two-way forwards. Even lesser-known guys such as Rich Peverley and Chris Kelly are maximizing their potential, which has to be a crippling prospect for opponents. Their defense has everything it needs (and should only get better once Dougie Hamilton matures) and they sport two goalies that could be the No. 1 guy on plenty of NHL teams.
In other words, while the absurdity should probably level out thanks to the law of averages, the Bruins aren’t running on luck alone. It seems hard to deny that the defending champions are a better team this season, which is a thought that’s almost as scary as their recent box scores.
