Boston Bruins: Northeast Division Champs! Now What?

The Boston Bruins made the second hurdle, which is to get into the playoffs and clinch home ice advantage in the opening round.

The playoffs became a certainty because of the stick of a young Brad Marchand against 2009-2010 Eastern Conference Champion Philadelphia Flyers.  The goal was not only the game winner, but a stat-important 20th goal of the season.

The current hurdle was cleared when the Bruins defeated the Atlanta Thrashers tonight by a score of 3-2 with the game winner on a penalty shot awarded to Michael Ryder.  The opportunity could not have come at a better time for the Forward.  The goal was his first in 12 games, his first successful penalty shot, and his fifth game winner.

This, in turn, eliminated the Thrashers mathematically from the post season.

So the Bruins cannot finish no worse than top three, which gives them home ice advantage in the first round of the 2010-11 Stanley Cup Playoffs.  

They can go further.

Albeit, the Bruins will most likely finish third in the conference as the Flyers and the Washington Capitals have 102 and 103 points with four and three games remaining respectively.

Boston has 99 points and will need a lot of help to catch these two teams.

Best Case Scenarios For The Bruins

Catching Washington

Let's say Boston won all of their remaining four games.  That would put them up to 107 points.

If Washington, who has only three games, and win two of three, they would also be at 107 points.

According to the tie-breaking rules, both teams would have 48 wins so it would come down to the season series.  Boston would gain at least a spot, as they won the season series 3-1-0.

Catching Philadelphia

Philadelphia would be a slightly more complicated matter.

With the Flyers currently at 102 points and four games left, they would need to lose two games and be at 106 points with the Bruins needing to win all four of their games to edge them out.

The other possibility is that the Flyers win two and lose one in OT, the Bruins would again have to win all their games and tie it at 107 points.

That would place them at a tie on wins, but the Bruins would win the spot due to the 3-0-1 season series.

However, unlikely that this will happen, stranger things have occurred.

Current Playoff Picture

As it stands, the Bruins are to face the Montreal Canadiens in the opening round.  While the season series ended at 2-3-1 in favor of the Habs, the Bruins did step up in the second half of the series and took two of the three games.

In the 7-0 rout that the Bruins handed the Habs when they played each other last, both teams had seven trips to the sin bin in that game and the Bruins' defense was very active.  Despite the Bruins earning four third period penalties, the Bruins still managed to score on the Habs four times. 

The Bruins currently do hold an advantage with the injury woes of the Montreal squad. They are playing hurt and the Bruins are, in relation, very healthy with key players stepping up as of late.

Both of the Bruins' netminders seem to have found their game with Tim Thomas winning the last four games he started and Tuukka Rask, who had trouble getting starts where his teammates' offense were abysmal at best, took his second win in as many starts, allowing just four goals on 66 SOGs.

Montreal's Carey Price has been on a bit of a slide and is currently 2-3-0 in his last five games.  Tonight's win against the New Jersey Devils has been somewhat of a gift to Price; he faced only 21 shots.  That many shots with a goalie of his caliber is almost automatic.

All in all, the Bruins will need to play as they have in the past week in order to take on the Habs and move on to the next round.  In their last meeting, the Bruins took away the Canadiens' time and space, which left them nothing to generate any offense.  It has been proven time and time again that if the speed and skill is taken away from the Habs, they are a much easier team to defeat.  Easier said than done.

Another factor that they need to take care of is discipline. When it is a five-on-five game, the Bruins are tops in the league while the Habs are in the middle of the pack. The Habs will most likely try and goad the Bruins into retaliatory penalties since they cannot match the physicality of the Bruins, and Montreal in power play is dangerous.

The final piece of the puzzle is Carey Price.  The Bruins need to get at Price hard and fast.  Price, overall is an outstanding goalie, but also is in one of the worst defensive cores in the NHL.  While Montreal has scored 211 goals thus far, they have allowed 205 which gives them a +6 in goal differential.

Even though he is 23 years young, he started 71 games so far and faced 2097 shots, which is second most in the league.  Every egg can be cracked and it is just a matter of how many whacks will it take to crack Price.

If they do not accomplish most of these, the Bruins will almost assuredly be golfing after the first round.

At this time, we do not have the final picture of the playoff's opening round.  If this is the round that will be dealt to the Bruins, they had better bring their A game.

This is Cory Ducey saying "Hit Hard, But Keep It Clean"