Bruins' First-Round Playoff Opponent Promises To Be A Bear
By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- The NHL's trade deadline has come and gone. The Boston Bruins bolstered their blue line, making a significant trade and major commitment to defenseman Hampus Lindholm. The team didn't make any upgrades at the forward.
How you feel about that inactivity up front likely ties in to your larger outlook on the forthcoming postseason, and how far you believe these Bruins might be able to go.
Yet when laying out a forecast for the postseason that awaits, it's genuinely difficult to look beyond the first round. Because no matter which way things shake out over the final six weeks of the regular season, the Bruins are in for a rather difficult opening round opponent.
The way things sit right now, the Bruins are in the top wild card spot in the Eastern Conference. That has them set to play against the Carolina Hurricanes in the first round.
The Canes may not strike fear in every NHL team right now, but they've certainly held a rather notable mental edge over the Bruins this season. Carolina is 3-0-0 vs. Boston this year, outscoring the Bruins 16-1 in those three games. That includes two of the worst games of the year for Boston -- a 7-1 shellacking on TD Garden ice in mid-January, and a 6-0 beatdown in Boston in early February. The Bruins were also shut out, 3-0, in their lone trip to Carolina thus far, way back in late October. With no more regular-season meetings left, those three games will stand as the complete regular-season history between the two teams, should they meet in the playoffs.
Of course, things could change, both in the wild card standings (the Capitals are three points behind Boston) or atop the conference, where the Panthers are just two points ahead of the Canes for No. 1 seed in the East.
Playing the Panthers, though, wouldn't be all that appealing to the Bruins. The two teams haven't met since October, with Florida winning at home, 4-1, and the Bruins beating Florida three nights later in a shootout in Boston. The two teams have one more head-to-head meeting on April 26.
The Panthers have been the NHL's second-best team and the East's best team this season, leading the NHL in goals scored and goal differential. They also just added Ben Chiarot and Claude Giroux. The Panthers are clearly going for it this year.
While playing either of the top teams in the conference isn't exactly an appealing outcome for Boston, the reality is ... the only other alternative doesn't feel great, either.
If the Bruins are able to leapfrog the Maple Leafs in the standings -- and they should, with Toronto having the same number of standings points with one fewer game played but floundering a bit as of late -- then they'll climb out of the wild card picture and into the Atlantic Division playoff structure. Their reward for doing so? A first-round date with the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Now, the Bruins have handled themselves fairly well against the back-to-back Stanley Cup champs thus far this season. Boston lost in OT, 3-2, in Tampa in early December, before beating the Lightning 5-2 in Tampa in early January. The teams still have two meetings left on the schedule, with the next one coming up on Thursday night.
From that perspective, there's some hope that the Bruins would have a chance against the Lightning. And they would. But the Lightning have proven over the last two years -- first in the bubble, then back in reality -- that they're a team that nobody wants to face in the playoffs.
That, really, is the extent of Boston's potential first-round opponents. (Craziness can obviously take place and jumble things, but if you're a gambler, the Bruins facing one of those three teams is the safe bet.) Barring an unforeseen collapse in Florida coinciding with a tremendous surge from the Bruins, it'll either be the Panthers, Lightning, or Hurricanes in the first round. Getting through any of those teams will be quite the challenge.