Boston Bruins Bruins Playoff Schedule

[Bad Hat Harry]

Mods feel free to merge if there's another thread on this or if it's been addressed somewhere else.

Is there anything definite on the Bruins' schedule for round 1?

I see playoffs start on 4/17, so I'd assume Game 1 would be 4/17 or 4/18, and then Game 2 would be 4/19 and 4/20, but not sure if anything has been confirmed.

I bought tix to Game 2, so just trying to figure out which night it'll be.

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[danpantz]

The 17th is marathon monday correct.

League would be smart to have to Bruins play that night. That would be an absolutely wild crowd.

 

[Fenway]

Everything I have heard says Marathon Monday night for Game 1

The rest is up in the air as they could still play one of 4 teams - Buffalo not dead yet

 

[SpeedyLazaro]

Has the league ever been smart

 

[MarchysNoseKnows]

League will want Toronto and EDM playing Sat night so you can back into the rest from there.

 

[Fenway]

League will want Toronto and EDM playing Sat night so you can back into the rest from there.

ABC has a Saturday game as well so...................

 

[Gee Wally]

The Maple Leafs’ checkered history of Stanley Cup playoff futility vs. the Bruins has defied explanation - The Boston Globe

Since a playoff win over the Bruins in 1959, the sight of the Black-and-Gold in the playoffs has been the death of the Leafs' Cup dreams, especially so in first-round matchups in in 2013, 2018 and 2019, when the Bruins prevailed each time in Game 7.

www.bostonglobe.com

The Stanley Cup playoffs begin in less than two weeks, and the Bruins and Leafs, last night’s TD Garden visitors, could meet by the end of this month for the start of Round 2.

The hard-luck Leafs, 2-1 losers in OT, have not advanced beyond Round 1 since 2004. They’ll open the postseason with the unenviable task of getting by the talented, ever-stubborn Lightning.

The Bruins, who were delivered to win No. 61 on David Pastrnak’s one-timer, still don’t know if they’ll face the Islanders, Penguins or Panthers. That riddle might not be answered until next Thursday night when the Black and Gold wrap up the regular season with a night in Montreal.

Realistically, there isn’t a Bruins fan under the age of 70 who witnessed the last time the Leafs edged the Black and Gold in the playoffs. It was the opening round in 1959, back in the days of the Original Six when it took only eight wins to clinch the Cup.

Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House. A pack of cigarettes sold for under 30 cents. Johnny Horton (no relation to Tim, his crewcut, the coffee, or the donuts) topped the Billboard charts with “The Battle of New Orleans.” Don McKenney, who later became a longtime coach at Northeastern, topped the Bruins scoring chart with 62 points.

In 1959, the Bruins dropped Games 1-2 at the Garden, squared the series, 3-3, with a win at Maple Leaf Gardens, then lost a Game 7 squeaker (3-2), the Leafs potting a pair of unanswered goals in the third. Johnny Bower proved too much in the Leafs’ net.

All these decades later, the sight of the Bruins in the playoffs has been the death of the Leafs’ Cup dreams, especially so in recent matchups. The two clubs met in Round 1 in 2013, 2018 and 2019, and each time the Bruins prevailed in Game 7.


The loss in 2013 remains the most painful for the Leafs.. In Game 7, Nazem Kadri gave Toronto a 4-1 lead with his strike 5:29 into the third period. The series appeared to be over. Some of the Garden faithful headed for the exits, unable to stomach the sight of the handshake line. The Leafs finally had shaken the 54-year Bruins jinx.

“This is terrible,” said then Bruins forward Chris Kelly, now an assistant on Jim Montgomery’s staff. ‘I can’t believe we’re going to lose to the Leafs.”

Suddenly, time and space and reality were cast into a funhouse mirror for the visitors. Nathan Horton popped one home at 9:18, trimming Toronto’s lead to 4-2, and then Milan Lucic potted one to make things interesting with 1:22 to go in regulation. Next came Patrice Bergeron with the equalizer that left the dumbfounded Leafs who were 51 seconds short of escaping the unfolding horror.

It was Bergeron again, 6:05 into overtime, who ended it, and the new(er) building in the old West End shook like the Garden of old. “Bergeron! Bergeron! Bergeron!” Dave Goucher bellowed from the 98.5 Sports Hub radio booth. “And the Bruins win the series!!!”

On the near-silent ride in the packed press elevator, which ferries media from the press box on Level 9 to floor level, Toronto Sun columnist Bruce Arthur turned to a Boston reporter and quietly said, “That is the most Leafs thing I have ever seen.”

For sheer entertainment and raw emotion, though, graybeard Bruins fans always will point to Round 1 of the 1969 playoffs between Boston and Toronto. Late in Game 1 at the Garden, with the Bruins in control of a 6-0 lead, Pat Quinn moved up from his spot at left defense and pulverized Bobby Orr, the Bruins legend caught with his head down as he began to motor up the right wing board.

Orr was knocked cold, flat on his back, with teammate Ken Hodge quick to prop up Orr’s head by tucking a glove behind his neck. The seething, rabid sellout Garden crowd wanted a piece of Quinn, or as many pieces as they could divvy up, as he made his way to the penalty box, where a couple of Boston cops quickly were charged, albeit reluctantly, with protecting his well-being.

Prior to Game 2, a stuffed dummy of Quinn, noose around its neck, hung from the facade of the second balcony seats. Because Orr was the victim of Quinn’s heinous hit, it was personal, to everyone in the building, throughout New England and much of Canada, even parts of Leafs country.

The Bruins rolled to a 10-0 win in Game 1, and then to a 7-0 triumph in Game 2. Only two years before, keep in mind, the Leafs had won the Cup, which today stands as their most recent title. Fifty-five years and counting…counting every day.

Orr, who spent the remainder of Game 1 at Mass General, where he stayed for overnight for observation, was long out of the building when tempers percolated and got overheated after a whistle with 3:46 to go in regulation, the Bruins already with a 10-goal lead in the bank (Phil Esposito led the way with 4-2—6).

Leafs forward Forbes Kennedy, an undersized menace who previously played four seasons for the Bruins, triggered an all-time brawl by first taking a swipe at Hodge. Bruins goalie Gerry Cheevers, who had been in some of Boston’s preseason camps with Kennedy, then took up the fight, and carried it over to the sideboards. AJ Greer and Leafs forward Sam Lafferty squared off in that very same spot on the ice Thursday night with 5:27 left in the first.

But before that Cheevers-Kennedy bout literally went sideways toward the wall, the enraged Kennedy smacked linesman George Ashley to the ground. Eddie Johnston, Cheevers’ partner, came off the bench and reached in from behind Kennedy to stop the scrap with Cheevers.

The brouhaha looked to be over for good, until Kennedy, prior to being sent off the ice, hooked up with Johnny “Pie” McKenize for the night’s farewell brawl. McKenzie, who spent summers as a rodeo performer in Western Canada, manhandled Kennedy like a helpless roping calf. The battered and bloodied Leafs wound up losing the series in four straight, outscored, 24-5

Kennedy, age 33 at the time, never played another NHL game. He was suspended indefinitely by then league president Clarence Campbell. It was reported he never met Campbell to explain the night’s events.

Some things in Leafs history, especially involving the Bruins in the playoffs, defy explanation. Thursday night again left them wondering what it takes to shake the Black-and-Gold shakes.

 

[Alicat]

Everything I have heard says Marathon Monday night for Game 1

The rest is up in the air as they could still play one of 4 teams - Buffalo not dead yet

View attachment 683334

Ty Anderson said he’s hearing Marathon Monday night

 

[Ladyfan]

Monday would work for me.

My daughter and I are spending a couple of days in Montreal and are driving back Sunday. Amanda was going to fly out Monday night to go back to Calif.