Is Toronto or Montreal This Week's Bigger Boston Bruins Matchup?

For once, it makes sense for the NBC Sports Network to feature the Boston Bruins and somebody other than the Montreal Canadiens on its “Wednesday Night Rivalry” card. This despite the fact that the Bruins shall visit the Bell Centre 24 hours after they tangle with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

No prospective observers should ignore the implications of Wednesday’s Boston-Toronto matchup. History be darned, there is plenty in the present to make this “other” Original Six, Atlantic Division contest worth tracking.

Actually, the short-term history that constitutes the first month of the 2014-15 NHL season tips the scale in Toronto’s favor as the Bruins’ more compelling half of their quick road trip.

Wednesday will be the second installment of the Bruins-Maple Leafs season series. In the 18 days since their first encounter, both parties have squandered negligible time improving their respective outlooks.

Upon dropping a mortifying 4-1 decision in front of their home crowd, the Leafs fell back below .500 at 3-4-1. They have gone 5-1-1 since, improving to 8-5-2 overall, and enter Wednesday’s action on a three-game point-getting streak.

Boston’s victory in that same Oct. 18 contest brought it back to .500 at 5-5-0. Since then, the Bruins momentarily slipped back below that line but are now riding a five-game win streak.

In turn, they return to the Air Canada Centre with a 10-6-0 transcript. Toronto therefore trails by two points but has a game in hand as each team hovers around the one-fifth mark of the schedule.

As though that were not sufficient incentive, the Maple Leafs must be itching for a head-to-head do-over considering the makeup of their Oct. 18 effort. The frustrated masses booed them off the ice and openly threatened to shift their focus to the building’s NBA tenant.

Per David Alter of the Leafs website, Toronto head coach Randy Carlyle went on to say, “There’s not a reward for your effort if you’re standing still and not prepared to skate and move and get inside. They were inside of us for more than half the game and they won the puck battles.”

This Wednesday will be Boston’s only other visit to the ACC this regular season. The Leafs will therefore have only one chance to give their recent nemesis a better rebuttal in front of their own fans.

Although it is rightly a team-wide desire, few individual players should be itching for Wednesday more than Bruin-turned-Bud Phil Kessel. Toronto’s top scorer, who has produced in nine of 15 games for an aggregate 19 points, had one of his rare unproductive nights Oct. 18.

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To exacerbate that addition to Kessel’s laundry list of subpar performances against his former employer, Boston defenseman Dougie Hamilton outscored him by three points that evening. Hamilton, naturally, is the only current piece on Boston’s roster that came via one of the draft picks obtained in exchange for Kessel in 2009.

A simple perusal of each team’s roster yields no similar storylines surrounding a Bruin-turned-Canadien or vice versa.

The Leafs distinguish Wednesday from Thursday with a face to put on their urge to redeem their previous Bruins bout in Kessel. Not that they necessarily need any personification of their motivation, but it ought to help their cause.

That gives Toronto a head start in the race to stack up on impetus logs. Boston can counter that by ensuring its top defensive skaters are ready to cover Kessel with the same authority they plan to bring against Max Pacioretty.

Besides rinsing out any residual vinegar from two-and-a-half weeks ago, Toronto’s reward for a regulation win would be pulling even in a gridlocked Atlantic Division. For the Bruins, this means accepting the notion of brandishing a target and stifling any subconscious temptation to treat the Toronto tilt as a tune-up for Thursday.

Granted, every team-oriented stake the Leafs can claim about Wednesday, Boston can emphasize in its upcoming endeavor to lasso the Canadiens. Montreal entered its Tuesday tilt with Winnipeg one point ahead of the Bruins at 10-4-1 to date.

Thursday will mark exactly three weeks since the first Bruins-Habs meeting of 2014-15. Upon blowing 1-0 and 3-2 leads en route to a 6-4 loss at the Bell Centre that night, the Bruins failed again to restore a winning record, falling to 4-5-0.

In that sense, Thursday shall pack the same fundamental buildup as Wednesday, only with reversed roles.

That role reversal, however, underscores one of the crucial differences in the buildup to the two games. When one team is expected to enter with multiple weeks’ worth of motivation in hand, it is on the other team to manufacture motivation.

If all goes according to logic, the Bruins will assume the former role on Thursday. But before they can think about that, they need to neutralize the hunters from Toronto.

That fact does not drain any meaning from the Montreal matchup. Thursday’s bout at the Bell Centre still figures to be another timelessly tempestuous testament to an ever-radiant rivalry.

That notwithstanding, in an upset of sorts, there is more meaning in Wednesday’s Boston-Toronto engagement. And it goes beyond the nearly identical hot streaks (5-1-1 for the Leafs, 5-1-0 for the Bruins) each team has fostered since their last faceoff.

This particular game will be a stiffer test for the Bruins by virtue of the practically inevitable stream of seething Leafs desperate for head-to-head redress. There is less mystery as to how much intensity Boston will bring Thursday than whether it can match Toronto’s on Wednesday.

It will need to do that, though, if it wants to maintain its momentum through its journey to Montreal.

Unless otherwise indicated, all statistics for this report were found via NHL.com and are through games of Monday, November 10.