Toronto should obviously be an option lol. I mean it is basically between Boston and Toronto at this point anyways. Though I do think that the Leafs will still end up in 2nd. They are coming out of by far the toughest part of their schedule this season, meanwhile Boston has been in a soft spot. That isn't meant as any kind of shot at Boston, a lot of teams don't take advantage of those soft spots and they did. But the Leafs have had a ridiculous schedule the last 6 weeks or so and it eases off a lot in the new year and towards the stretch run.
Here to help: the Bruins lost a total of 49 - FOURTY-NINE - man games to injury. Our
entire top 9 + two defensemen + our starting goalie have missed significant time (Krejci and McQuaid are still out).
That means that the Bruins had no more than probably 2/3rds of the regular roster for the vast majority of the season so far. It is not by chance that the Bruins had to push in a great deal of rookies in the lineup (SEVEN rookies scored their first ever NHL goal for the Bruins this season...). Only in the last 8-9 games we were close to fielding a full roster. As things stand, we haven't had even one game @ full roster.
All this to say that Boston
has NOT been in a "soft spot" whatsoever. As a matter of fact,
we've been through hell.
And even with that, we currently have the 6th best points percentage in the whole league (the only team with worst injuries than us, Anaheim, has the 20th best points %) . Only Tampa, Vegas, New Jersey, Nashville, and Los Angeles have performed better: that means we outperformed 83.3% of the league.
PS: against those 5 teams who have been better than us, we have a combined 5-2-1 record. That’s a 688 record or a 112 points pace vs the best of the best.