Hurricanes will face Bruins in NHL’s Stanley Cup Playoffs. Here’s a scouting report
“Original 6 market” vs. “Original 26 market.”
“Blue blood” vs. “New blood.”
Brad Marchand’s “Lamborghini” vs. Vincent Trocheck’s “Prius.”
Pick a storyline — and there are plenty — for this first-round Stanley Cup Playoff matchup, and you’ll just be scratching the surface.
After staying in the race for the Atlantic Division’s third seed up to the final game of the regular season, the Bruins made it official Friday night in Toronto. With the team’s top six scorers all resting, the Bruins fell to the Maple Leafs, 5-2, remaining in the top wild card position in the Eastern Conference and drawing a first-round Stanley Cup playoff date with the Carolina Hurricanes.
The Canes’ faithful are particularly pumped about one particular statistical anomaly from this season, however: In three games between the Hurricanes and Boston Bruins this season, Carolina won all three, outscoring the B’s 16-1.
But beware: The Bruins team the Hurricanes will see beginning Monday night at PNC Arena in Raleigh is far different than that which they last saw on February 10. Two months is a long time in hockey team development, and both teams are playing very differently.
For one, the Bruins and Canes were both active at the trade deadline. Boston added stalwart defenseman Hampus Lindholm to its blue line, while Carolina added depth forward Max Domi. Neither player has faced the other team this season with their current teammates.
The teams are also facing a similar situation between the pipes, due to an unfortunate late-season injury to the Canes’ Frederik Andersen.
Boston has its goalie of the future, Jeremy Swayman, alongside a seven-season NHL veteran with no playoff experience in Linus Ullmark, signed initially to back up Tuukka Rask upon his return. Rask returned from injury for four games before retiring, leaving the Swayman-Ullmark duo to shoulder the load.
Carolina has one of its goalies of the future, Pyotr Kochetkov, who was forced into service late in the season after a pair of injuries, and nine-season NHL veteran Antti Raanta, who has seen limited playoff action while playing for four different teams.
And then there’s this little nugget: The Hurricanes and Bruins are facing off this week for the fifth time in the playoffs. If that seems high, it should. The Hurricanes are beginning their ninth postseason run since relocating to North Carolina from Hartford, Connecticut, in 1997, and fourth in the past four years.
This is the fifth time in those nine playoff appearances the Canes will have to go through Boston, and only once — in May 2009 — has that ended well for Carolina. Most recently, the Bruins ousted the Canes in the first round in 2020. In 2019, the Canes fell to the Bruins in the conference final, and 20 years before that, in the Canes’ second season in North Carolina, they fell to Boston in the first round.
The lone Carolina win over Boston in the playoffs came in 2009, in the conference semifinal round. The Canes went on to lose to Pittsburgh in a sweep in the conference final, kicking off a nine-year playoff drought.
But that’s all ancient history, right? What about this year? Here’s how Boston stacks up:
The forwards
Dubbed “The Perfection Line” some years back, the trio of Marchand, David Pastrnak and Patrice Bergeron has been rock solid for the Bruins in the past. But this year, they’ve done something a bit differently, and it seems to be working well. Last season’s addition of Taylor Hall, and his subsequent offseason signing, along with the acquisition of former Hurricanes center and last year’s playoff enemy Eric Haula, has allowed the Bruins to spread the wealth a bit up front.
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Most recently, the Bruins have been running Bergeron at center between wingers Marchand and Jake DeBrusk. DeBrusk was vocal in wanting a trade earlier this season, but the Bruins never moved him at the deadline, and he’s been an offensive spark with the top trio.
Pastrnak, meanwhile, is playing alongside Haula and Hall on a “1B” line, and the team’s depth of scoring has improved. The Czech winger was still better than a point per game this year, eclipsed on his team only by Marchand. Hall also approached the 60-point mark.
The Bruins “second six” has seen a handful of players rotate through this season, with the one constant being centerman Charlie Coyle. Craig Smith, Trent Frederic, Tomas Nosek, Curtis Lazar and Nick Foligno have seen the most games at forward for the Bruins beyond the core seven, with young Marc McLaughlin showing late-season promise. Anton Blidh and Oskar Steen could also see action for the B’s.
The defense
The Bruins’ defense hinges largely on the play of one of the best young defenders in the game, Charlie McAvoy. The slick defenseman with a strong two-way game led his team in points by a defenseman by more than 30 points, and is as solid as they come both on the power play and on the penalty kill.
Matt Grzelcyk is a good offensive complement to McAvoy, and Lindholm is a minutes-eating, shutdown defender. Mike Reilly, Derek Forbort and Brandon Carlo round out the rest of the Bruins’ regular defensive unit. Connor Clifton brings an up-tempo change of pace to the lineup, and the B’s have rolled with him quite a bit this season, as well.
The goalies
If you’d asked the Bruins back in October what their goaltending tandem would be in the playoffs, not many would have said, “Jeremy Swayman and Linus Ullmark.”
Swayman jumped right into the fray last season after playing three years at the University of Maine, appearing in 10 regular-season games and one playoff game. He was originally going to spend most of this season in Providence with the Bruins’ AHL affiliate, but he played his way onto the roster, and performed well above expectations. This season, Swayman finished with a 2.37 GAA and .915 save percentage.
Last offseason, the Bruins signed Ullmark to a two-year deal, and he was supposed to be a solid veteran backup for the now-departed Rask. Instead, he became a part of a perfectly split tandem. His 2.45 GAA and .917 save percentage complemented Swayman well.
The tandem has done well, allowing 191 goals in 77 combined starts through Wednesday, a 2.46 cumulative GAA and a .915 combined save percentage.
Much like the Canes’ keepers — minus Andersen, for the moment — the Bruins’ goalies are short on meaningful playoff experience.
Special teams
There’s no logical explanation for it, really, but the Boston Bruins power play has been horrendous to close out the regular season.
A team with Marchand, Pastrnak, Bergeron, Hall and McAvoy ought to be able to score power play goals in its sleep. But the team ended the season on a pretty nasty power play skid (they scored a few in the final two games, though were nearing 0-for-50 prior to that), which means one of two things: 1) They’re due; or 2) They’re in disarray. The answer is likely more the former than the latter, which means the Canes’ top penalty unit cannot afford to sleep on a top unit with so much firepower.
Where the Canes and Bruins are really similar is in the amount of time each team spends in the penalty box per game relative to their opponents. The Canes are second-to-last in the NHL with a -.57 net penalties per game. The Bruins are right there with them in third-to-last with a -.36. Each team has an average penalty minutes-per-game average just shy of 10. The difference overall is how well the teams kill those penalties off, with the Canes leading the NHL at 88 percent to the Bruins’ 81.3 percent.
Coaching
The Bruins’ coaching staff has guided this team to the playoffs for the sixth consecutive season, which is as long as Bruce Cassidy has been the head coach. He took over for the fired Claude Julien in the middle of the 2016-17 season, and led a furious regular-season charge to make the playoffs that season, where they lost in the first round. Since then, the Bruins have won at least one playoff round in four consecutive postseasons, reaching the Stanley Cup Final in 2019.
Following the 2021-22 regular season, Cassidy is sitting at 399 regular-season games coached with the Bruins. Monday’s playoff opener will be his 67th postseason contest. He is 33-33 with the Bruins and 35-37 all-time in the playoffs.
This story was originally published April 29, 2022 at 9:41 PM with the headline "Hurricanes will face Bruins in NHL’s Stanley Cup Playoffs. Here’s a scouting report."
