Days before King Charles III was to be formally crowned in England, there was another coronation underway in Boston. Or at least that was the unmistakable vibe during Game 1 of the Boston Bruins‘ series against the Florida Panthers.
The 2022-23 Bruins were the most successful regular-season team in NHL history, setting new league records for wins (65) and points (135) in a single season. Even if you didn’t believe they’d win the Stanley Cup, the Bruins’ going on a playoff journey toward one felt like a certainty. Their first-round series against the Florida Panthers was like sitting through the previews before the real movie starts.
Until it wasn’t.
The Panthers rallied from a 3-1 series deficit, and a 3-2 Game 7 deficit with one minute remaining in regulation, to eliminate the Bruins from the Stanley Cup playoffs on Sunday night. Carter Verhaeghe‘s goal 8:35 into overtime turned TD Garden into a silent mortuary where a championship inevitability was laid to rest.
“It hurts. You compete hard and battle all year for that,” captain Patrice Bergeron said. “We’re shocked and disappointed.”
What went wrong? Here are five possible reasons the Boston Bruins became yet another regular-season titan that was toppled in the playoffs.
They stopped being the Bruins
During the regular season, I asked NHL veteran Kyle Okposo for his scouting report on the Bruins.
“They’re just a well-oiled machine,” he said. “They’re different than Tampa a number of years ago. [Boston] is a cross between the Lightning and the Bruins of old, when you used to go in there and it wasn’t fun playing against them when they had, like, a murderers’ row back there. They’re just solid. They play the same way the entire time. When you get mature teams like that, that do that, they’re tough to beat.”
That’s all correct, and the reason why the Bruins lost only 12 times in regulation over 82 games. There was a consistency and a confidence. They were a team that could beat you defensively (first in goals-against average) or offensively (second in goals-for average).
How many teams in NHL history could boast a goalie with a .938 save percentage, a center almost predestined to win another Selke Trophy and a winger with 61 goals?
But in the series against Florida, someone threw a wrench in the machine’s gears. So many of the things that made the Bruins unstoppable in the regular season were nowhere to be found in the first round.
Consider:
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The Bruins posted a 3.71 goals-against average, 12th overall in the playoffs. In the regular season, they were first in even-strength save percentage (.939). In the playoffs, they were also 12th (.912).
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While offense wasn’t necessarily a problem, a few regular-season stars didn’t shine in the playoffs. Charlie Coyle had 45 points in the regular season; he had two in seven playoff games. Hampus Lindholm had 53 points in the regular season; he had none against the Panthers.
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Linus Ullmark is expected to win the Vezina Trophy as the league’s top goaltender. In the playoffs, he was 3-3 with a .896 save percentage, and didn’t see the crease in Game 7.
The last note speaks to another difference between the regular season and the postseason: coach Jim Montgomery’s performance.
That Ullmark played six games before Jeremy Swayman saw the crease after the two of them were such a successful tandem in the regular season was a mistake. Montgomery also admitted that not having Bergeron playing with Brad Marchand at the start of Game 5 was a mistake, as was his inability to get the Bruins to play at a better pace.
“I felt we had the right personnel and I have to take some responsibility for not being able to get us to play north quicker,” the likely Jack Adams winner (coach of the year) said.
But the biggest differences between the regular season and the postseason were the Bruins’ tendency for glaring mistakes and their inability to close out the Panthers.
As Bergeron noted, Florida’s puck-pressure game led to many of those mistakes, but “obviously we didn’t play our best.” Montgomery called their turnovers in Game 2 “catastrophic.” Ullmark basically gave away Game 5 with a misplay behind his net, which led to a goal that was like a defibrillator on the chest of the Panthers’ playoff hopes.
Then there’s the injury piece. David Krejci missed Games 3 and 4. Bergeron missed the first four games of the series with what is now known to be a herniated disc in his back. Krejci had four points in four games, including a goal in Game 7, but he was a minus-3. Bergeron had a goal in three games and was a very uncharacteristic minus-6. His underlying numbers show that Bergeron was his typical defensive force. But the offense wasn’t there at 5-on-5.
The biggest stunner is that this Boston team didn’t have the same resiliency as Florida. The Panthers won every game in which they scored first. The Bruins won 22 of 35 games when trailing first (.629) in the regular season, best in the NHL. Even when they rallied, they couldn’t put Florida away.
The Tkachuk/Bennett line
The Bruins have a collection of talented forwards. But whether it was Bergeron and Krejci being limited by injuries or the general inconsistency of their 5-on-5 offense, Boston was unable to have one line or duo it could rely on to dominate play.
The same couldn’t be said of the Panthers. Once Sam Bennett returned to their lineup in Game 2 after missing the opener due to injury, his line with Matthew Tkachuk became the formidable force in the series, according to Montgomery.
“I thought the Bennett line was pretty dominant,” he said.
Tkachuk was the difference-maker that the Bruins didn’t have in this series. In some ways, he out-Marchand’d Brad Marchand: He had five goals and six assists in the series, played physically and drew massive heat from his opponents and opposing fans. He was also the Panthers’ off-ice mouthpiece, saying things like, “We were supposed to get swept this series, right? Everyone was saying [it].”
Montgomery had to hand it to him: “Tkachuk’s an outstanding hockey player. We didn’t contain him. They always changed the momentum back to them every time they were on the ice.”
Bennett and Tkachuk saw time with Nick Cousins, Verhaeghe and Eetu Luostarinen on their line. In six games, the primary lines that Bennett and Tkachuk played on had a plus-20 shot attempt advantage, a plus-4 scoring chance advantage and outscored the Bruins 4-1.
The series-winning goal was thanks to Bennett and Tkachuk grinding in the Bruins’ zone. They fought for the puck. Bennett won it. He passed to Verhaeghe as Tkachuk moved his body in front of Swayman’s eyes.
Puck goes in. Panthers move on. Bruins go home.
“In the end, that line kept making plays,” Montgomery said.
The Panthers were not intimidated
After Game 7, Tkachuk once again noted what a considerable underdog the Panthers were in the eyes of the hockey world.
“Let’s be honest. Nobody in the whole world thought we were going to win this series,” he said, “except for the guys in that room.”
That last part was the important one. Whether it was because the Bruins were a heavy favorite and the Panthers were playing with house money, or because they genuinely believed they could take out Boston, Florida never stopped competing. There was zero quit.
“They did a really good job of pushing back whenever we were getting that momentum,” Marchand said.
You could see the confidence growing. Tkachuk’s goal in Game 1 that made it a one-goal game until late in the third period. Their Game 2 win in Boston. Their overtime win in Game 5 to avoid elimination, after two humbling losses on home ice. Their two rallies in Game 6 after the Bruins took leads. Their last-minute rally in Game 7 to force overtime.
Boston loves to win the war of attrition. “If we build our game, we wear our teams down,” Montgomery said.
Except they were never able to wear down Florida. The Panthers would rally, play hard and show zero intimidation when the Bruins would get rolling. Not only did Florida not get worn down, it got stronger as the series wore on.
“They dug down and won more battles,” Marchand said. “That’s it sometimes.”
The Presidents’ Trophy curse
Whether or not there’s a supernatural hex associated with winning the Presidents’ Trophy, the numbers don’t lie. Since the 1985-86 season, when the trophy was first awarded, only 11 regular-season champs made the Stanley Cup Final, with eight of them hoisting the Cup.
No Presidents’ Trophy winner has advanced to the Stanley Cup Final since the NHL went to the wild-card format in 2013-14. The Bruins joined the 2018-19 Tampa Bay Lightning as Presidents’ Trophy winners that lost in the first round to wild-card teams.
Ironically, it was that Lightning team that the Bruins passed to set the all-time regular-season wins record. Perhaps even more ironically, Panthers GM Bill Zito and goalie Sergei Bobrovsky were members of the Columbus Blue Jackets team that swept the Lightning in 2019.
Pushing aside the idea of a “curse” for a moment: Does winning the Presidents’ Trophy and cruising to first place in the regular season impact how a team plays in the postseason?
“I do think our first two games we played, we weren’t ready for the intensity of Stanley Cup playoffs and I think that goes with the regular season,” Montgomery said. “But in Games 5, 6 and 7, we had dug in. That’s where it’s a little stupefying.”
The Bruins had talked about the unique pressure of trying to go wire-to-wire. Marchand said the quiet part out loud in a March interview with ESPN: “It’s not about the regular season. If you win the Presidents’ Trophy but you don’t win the Cup, nobody cares. That’s what we know on this team.”
So the Bruins knew entering the playoffs that it was Cup or bust. Either they’re an all-time great in team sports history or they’re another footnote in the storied history of Presidents’ Trophy disappointments — albeit one that now owns some impressive regular-season records.
“We were trying to do whatever we could to not let it affect us in the room. I thought we did a really good job of that,” Marchand said. “I don’t think that played a part in why we didn’t win, but I think they definitely used that as motivation.”
But beyond the underdog vibe discussed earlier, there’s another Presidents’ Trophy effect that may have been a factor in the series.
Please recall the team that had the best regular-season record the year before the Bruins’ record-breaking campaign:
The Florida Panthers, who won the Presidents’ Trophy with 122 points.
Verhaeghe said something interesting after the game: “They had a crazy regular season. But the playoffs are completely different. I mean, we had a crazy regular season last year and it really didn’t amount to anything.”
The Panthers were swept in the second round last season by the Lightning, a loss so emphatic that it cost interim coach Andrew Brunette any chance at keeping the gig. But what if the lesson the Panthers learned last season was that regular-season success means nothing when the playoffs start? And what if that lesson enabled them to not be intimidated by the Bruins standing across the ice?
What if the real curse of the Presidents’ Trophy is the knowledge that it doesn’t actually mean anything when the puck drops for Game 1?
Finally, maybe they are who we thought they were?
Before the Bruins became the most dominant regular-season team in the history of the NHL, there were some questions about what kind of team they could be in 2022-23.
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How wide open was the window to win with such a veteran team?
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Was Montgomery the right coach to replace Bruce Cassidy, who was fired after six seasons and a 107-point campaign?
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Could the battery of Ullmark and Swayman match the goaltending dominance of Tuukka Rask and Tim Thomas before them?
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Was that blue line good enough to handle a tenacious forechecking team?
As they set new NHL records for wins and points, they answered many of those questions and added some insurance — like defenseman Dmitry Orlov — to fortify those answers.
And yet two of their most veteran players labored with injuries in the playoffs. Montgomery, by his own admission, had trouble getting his team to its game against Florida. The goaltending was substandard when compared to that of the regular season. And much like last year’s playoff series against the Carolina Hurricanes, the Bruins had trouble with a tenacious forechecking group in the Panthers.
Through 82 games, the Bruins convinced us they were a Stanley Cup-worthy juggernaut.
After seven games against the Panthers, is it possible the Bruins are just who we thought they were?