Bruins' playoff success must be frustrating for Maple Leafs to watch
Michael Traikos
RALEIGH, N.C. — This has to be killing the Toronto Maple Leafs.
How could it not?
No one wants to live their life in the past, always asking themselves ‘what if,’ and wondering what might have happened had they done things differently. But you can be sure that question is being asked in Toronto a day after the Boston Bruins punched their way to the Stanley Cup final following a four-game sweep against the Carolina Hurricanes.
So let’s play the ‘what if’ game.
What if the Leafs had beaten the Bruins in the Eastern Conference quarterfinal? What if they had held on and won Game 6? What if they hadn’t laid an egg in Game 7?
What then?
Would the Leafs had then defeated the Columbus Blue Jackets in the second round and also swept the Carolina Hurricanes? Would it be them — and not the Bruins — who are now resting up to play either the San Sharks or the St. Louis Blues in the Stanley Cup final?
It sounds so easy. But that’s because the Bruins made it look that way.
I don’t remember there ever being an easier path to reaching the final. For that, the Leafs should be kicking themselves.
This was their year. With Tampa Bay, Washington and Pittsburgh all out in the first round — and Calgary, Winnipeg, Nashville and Vegas gone in the West — all the Leafs had to do was get by Boston.
Beat the Bruins and you then faced the eighth-seeded Blue Jackets, followed by the seventh-seeded Hurricanes and a Sharks or Blues team that has logged a ton of miles in the playoffs. So yeah, watching the Bruins celebrate, you can’t help but think that the Leafs blew an opportunity to do something special.
This could have been them posing in front of the Prince of Wales Trophy on Thursday night. Then again, hold that thought.
The thing with alternate realities and butterfly effects is that you cannot just hop into your Delorean and simply swap one team out for another and expect the same results. This isn’t Back to the Future. You can’t suggest that had Ottawa scored in a Game 7 overtime against the Penguins in the 2017 conference final that they would have also defeated the Predators for the Stanley Cup. Nor can you say that Vegas — and not San Jose — would be on the cusp of reaching the final if not for some questionable officiating in Game 7 of a first-round series against the Sharks.
So the fact that Toronto had two chances at defeating Boston does not actually mean that the Leafs and Bruins are equals. If anything, losing to them illustrated the gap between a team that is four wins away from its second championship — and third trip to the final — in eight years and one that has lost in the first round in each of the past three years.
The Bruins beat the Leafs because they had a hotter goaltender, because they won the special teams battle, and because they were deeper on offence and defence. They were more experienced. They were better at adapting to whatever their opponent was throwing at them.
Had the Leafs advanced to the second round, there was no guarantee that they would not have advanced to the final. They might not have gotten past the Hurricanes or the Blue Jackets for that matter.
As good as Toronto’s Frederik Andersen played in the first round, Boston’s Tuukka Rask was that much sharper. And he kept it up, by then outduelling Columbus’ Sergei Bobrovsky in the second round and holding Carolina to just five goals in four games. After 17 games, he has a stingy of 1.84 goals-against average and .942 save percentage.
Rask was a big reason why Boston’s penalty kill (86.3%) limited Toronto to just three goals on 16 shots. But it was the Bruins’ power play that has really carried them during these playoffs. The team has connected on 17 of 50 attempts — seven of those goals came against the Leafs — for a 34% success rate that is almost unheard of in a year when no other team was better than 28.2%.
Offensively, the Bruins received production from all lines. The big guns (Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak) combined for 22 goals and 46 points in 17 games. But it wasn’t just the top line that did damage. Third-line forwards Charlie Coyle and Marcus Johansson also combined for nine goals and 21 points.
