Boston Bruins: Are They Officially The Beasts of the East?

Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby has had another unfortunate setback (and no matter who you root for or ardently root against, “unfortunate” is the operative word). Philadelphia Flyers captain Chris Pronger’s season has been pronounced over due to his own concussion troubles.

Even before the Penguins lost their single-best celestial scorer, the Boston Bruins got the better of them in hostile territory less than two weeks ago. And on Saturday, on the other side of Pennsylvania, the Flyers crumbled without Pronger’s services against the Bruins.

Boston’s 6-0 matinee triumph at the Wells Fargo Center unfolded in a manner sequentially reminiscent of Games 1, 3 and 4 of last year’s Eastern Conference semifinals, when the Flyers were likewise lacking their towering bruiser.

And with Pronger out of the equation for the balance of 2011-12, the Bruins are armed with the knowledge of what they can do to Philadelphia so long as they are consistently hungry.

The Penguins still have Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal to anchor a host of other reliable skaters. Although, beginning with their 3-1 loss to the Bruins on Dec. 5, they have dropped four out of five games by a cumulative count of 19-14.

Pittsburgh stumbled back home for a Saturday night bout with Buffalo one night removed from a 6-4 falter in Ottawa, where the Bruins had just won, 5-2, two evenings earlier.

The Penguins were surprising no one with their position atop the Eastern Conference leaderboard even after the second-place Bruins had nipped them at the Consol Energy Center. But within a dozen days, they dropped two slots in the Atlantic Division behind Philadelphia and the New York Rangers (by virtue of winning percentage).

If the playoffs started today, Pittsburgh would be slated to play the first two games of the opening round at Madison Square Garden.

Meanwhile, the Flyers had likewise succeeded their intrastate rival for first in the conference, only to let Boston give them tight company Saturday afternoon. Each team now has 43 points in 30 games-played, but the matchup is falling into some old patterns while the two rivals appear to be trending in inverse directions.

Extraordinarily enough, in the Claude Julien era, the Bruins are undefeated in regular-season visits to Philadelphia at 8-0-1 by an aggregate 36-15 score. They are 3-2 in postseason games at the Wells Fargo Center.

Considering that, the Flyers’ head-turning project of deconstruction and reconstruction over the summer faced one of its toughest early tests through the Bruins’ visit. If it had any significant short-term effect, then the odds would have favored a trend-stopper.

Instead, this one proved a trend accelerator. Between six individual goal-scorers and 12 different point-getters, including four multi-pointers, the Bruins all but maxed out their depth and their capabilities on Saturday. In the process, they stamped their most lopsided win over Philadelphia in recent memory.

The only nominal sore spot on Boston’s half of Saturday’s stat sheet was David Krejci losing 12 of his 17 faceoffs and being one of only five Bruins without an addition to his plus/minus rating.

Then again, he along with linemates Nathan Horton and Milan Lucic each notched a power-play point as part of the team’s 3-for-8 harvest in the special teams department.

Perhaps most encouragingly, though, top gun Tyler Seguin launched a season-high six shots on goal, the most for him in a single outing since Nov. 12. And he cultivated a goal and an assist for his first multi-point effort in 10 appearances. That brings him up to seven such performances on the year.

Sure, the Penguins are without Crosby indefinitely. And yes, Philadelphia will still be missing its own peerless puckslinger, Claude Giroux, for a while. But both of those clubs have an abundance of depth and Boston’s ostensible advantage in the head-to-head matchups won’t matter much if Seguin is not asserting his presence.

And there is not much sense in banking on a more lenient blue line border patrol merely because Pronger has been shut down yet again. There are enough designated defensemen and stingy shutdown forwards at head coach Peter Laviolette’s service. There has to have been if the Flyers were to enter Saturday’s matchup on a seven-game winning streak as old as this calendar month, which they did.

Yet still, if they thoroughly set the tone, the Bruins can lasso the Broad Street Bullies and constrict them to the point where a goalie swap is warranted. That was what happened Saturday between starter Ilya Bryzgalov and Russian countryman Sergei Bobrovsky, much as it did between Bobrosvky and Brian Boucher twice in last year’s playoffs.

At the other end, the NHL’s most regal defense simply neutralized the league’s single-fieriest offense. The Flyers―complete with Scott Hartnell, Jaromir Jagr, Matt Read, Maxime Talbot, Danny Briere, James van Riemsdyk and Wayne Simmonds―had brooked only one other shutout before Saturday.

Two of the aforementioned could not pelt Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas once. But the rest of the Flyers whiffed on a collective 31 stabs at the Vezina-caliber veteran.

As it happens, the only other stopper to hand the Flyers a lemon-based doughnut this season has been the Rangers’ Henrik Lundqvist, whom Boston has yet to encounter.

The gauge on that matchup will have to wait to take shape. And if Thomas and his praetorian guards can stifle the Flyers the way they just did, Lundqvist could certainly continue his favorable history against the NHL’s second-most potent depth chart, namely that of the Bruins.

Jose Theodore and the Florida Panthers can attest to that, although time will tell as to whether a lack of recent postseason experience will warrant some growing pains for that franchise later this season.

But for the moment anyway, Boston has done more than a little to reiterate its competitive posture, answering and at times drowning out the loudest bells its conference can ring.