Looking back, all of those preseason predictions for the Bruins were as bad as this team is good - The Boston Globe
The NHL's top team has proven predictions to be wrong. Way wrong. Embarrassingly wrong for some of us.
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The NHL-best Bruins won’t officially close out the first half of their schedule until the Seattle Kraken visit TD Garden for Game 41 on Jan. 12, and they return from a three-day holiday break for Tuesday night’s Game 34, against the Senators in Ottawa.
Jim Montgomery’s red-hot Black and Gold, atop the league’s overall standings with 56 points, on Thursday night reached the midpoint of their home schedule with a 3-2 comeback trimming of the Winnipeg Jets.
The Bruins stand an astounding 18-0-2 (.950) on Causeway Street ice and 27-4-2 overall, the best start in the franchise’s near century in the skate-and-shoot business.
Fair to say most, if not all, of us got it wrong with our preseason prognostications. The guess here was that the Bruins and Capitals again would be in the Eastern Conference wild-card shuffle, right where they were last season when the Bruins nabbed the No. 7 spot with 107 points and Washington slotted in at No. 8 with 100. Some predicted they’d be entirely out of the playoff mix.
The Capitals have tracked as expected, right there in the No. 7 seeding spot when pre-holiday play came to an end Friday night.
The Bruins, meanwhile, have dominated since puck drop in October, starting with their 5-2 win in Washington paced by five scorers on opening night. That breadth of scoring, along with an impressive up-tempo pace of offensive attack, have been the club’s trademark for the first two-plus months of play.
Here amid their torrid and historic start, we revisit five of the lead storylines from the pre-season and how the Bruins thus far have ripped the script to bits:
1. Offseason surgeries and delayed starts for Brad Marchand (hips), Charlie McAvoy (shoulder), and Matt Grzelcyk (shoulder) will lead to a slow start, possibly burying the Bruins in a playoff DNQ pile by the Thanksgiving break.
Way wrong. Embarrassingly wrong for some of us.
So, uh, what happened?
Perhaps most important, all three of the surgically repaired were back in the lineup well ahead of initial projections. Grzelcyk returned first, after missing only four games, followed by Marchand (7) and McAvoy (13).
2. The ages of their No. 1-2 centers, Patrice Bergeron (37) and David Krejci (36) will be evident from the start, continuing to hold back an offense that couldn’t find its mojo, if it had it to find, in the 2022 playoffs.
Well, mojo found, and Bergeron (27 points) and Krejci (26 points) have been mojo masters.
Even in their advanced thirtysomethings, they’ve proven productive, efficient, and stable forces in what has been the league’s top-rated offense (based on total goals and goal differential). True, they’re far from the fleetest two pivots in an increasingly go-kart NHL, but they still deliver with requisite pace and their off-the-charts vulcanized IQ.
Now, with 33 games ticked off the schedule, the question remains how each holds up over the remaining 49 and possibly four rounds of playoffs. The grind should wear on old bones, but really, hasn’t that narrative worn older than Jake DeBrusk’s trade request?
Montgomery has been liberal with days off, allowing vital rest across the roster, and both Bergeron and Krejci have his trust to take whatever maintenance days they desire.
3. Lack of scoring will be a big bugaboo, potentially the club’s fatal flaw.
Honestly, folks, who comes up with this craziness?
Well, before filling up the dunk tank, remember the offense last season produced 253 goals, good for 15th in the Original 32. The Bruins ended up with a +35 goal differential ( No. 10 overall), and then came up a hair short in the goal-for-goal department against a younger, more vibrant Carolina Hurricanes offense in the playoffs. The trend line was not promising.
Big things were expected of David Pastrnak, and he’s delivered even beyond expectations (contract years have a way of doing that). He leads the club in scoring (24-23–47) and is on pace for career bests in goals (60) and points (117).
Pastrnak also is on pace for a contract extension for $11 million a year or better, but talks have been, shall we say, slower than a gas-powered ‘64 Zamboni.
Beyond the overall breadth and scope of goal scoring (seven forwards already tracking for 20-plus) there have been some significant surprises, first and foremost Taylor Hall, thus far producing his best numbers since his 2017-18 MVP season with the New Jersey Devils. Also, Charlie Coyle, often Hall’s pivot on the No. 3 line, is delivering his best game since arriving in February 2019 and could pot 20 for the first time as a Bruin.
4. Jeremy Swayman will emerge as the No. 1 goalie, supplying a vital foothold, especially early on with key players recovering from surgery.
To which Linus Ullmark all but said, “Here, hold my mug of Norrlands Guld.”
Ullmark, 29, has emerged as the league’s top stopper and by far the front nine’s leading Vezina Trophy candidate. He had a very choppy first half in 2021-22, after arriving as an unrestricted free agent, and a solid second half, but not the kind of performance that foreshadowed the Hasek-like numbers he has pinned up this season.
Highly doubtful that Montgomery would feed him such a heavy workload, but Ullmark, an astounding 19-1-1, has a shot to be the only Bruins goalie other than Pete Peeters (1982-83) to record 40 wins.
5. Montgomery, with very limited NHL head coaching experience, is inheriting a 107-point team on the verge of makeover. His second kick at the can could be brief, perhaps his last.
The former stellar University of Maine forward instead has delivered numbers like no coach in Bruins history. It’s almost impossible to think he/they could keep it up for a full season and into the playoffs, but barring injury … at some point you just have to believe in the Monty Method.
Montgomery, 53, was 31 games into his second year as Stars coach when his battle with the bottle led to his abrupt dismissal from behind the Dallas bench. “A coaching genius,” another NHL team executive mused shortly after general manager Don Sweeney decided to give Montgomery a second chance.
Montgomery’s approach is not novel across the league: a speed game with everyone looking/thinking/expected to score, backed by a reliable defense, albeit one that was established long before his arrival.
Montgomery, never openly critical of his players, has loosened up the attack and loosened up the room by showing significant tolerance the few times bold scoring chances have blown up.
