It’s early, but the Bruins sure look good
The Bruins, the hottest team in the NHL for October, still have 73 games to go in the 2022-23 season.
Which is to say, friends of the Black and Gold, there are many months to go before anyone around the Original 32 gets to revel in that annual NHL tradition of booing commissioner Gary Bettman out of the barn as he hands over the Stanley Cup.
“We’re pretty happy, but we want to keep pushing, we’re never satisfied,” said Charlie Coyle, following the 4-0 win in Columbus Friday night that improved the Bruins’ league-best mark to 8-1-0. “This doesn’t get us in the playoffs. This doesn’t give us a championship. It’s a good start, yeah, but we’ve got to keep pushing.”
For a cold-bucket-of-water reminder, three NHL clubs, Carolina, Edmonton, and Florida, opened last season by winning eight of their first nine games. They averaged 114 points for the season.
Come playoff time, the Hurricanes and Panthers didn’t make it beyond Round 2. The Oilers, with NHL leading scorer Connor McDavid as their franchise centerpiece, were swept out of the Western Conference finals as part of the Avalanche title run.
Cup play is the hardest championship run in all of sports. Blistering hot Octobers too often become May’s tear-filled showers.
Nonetheless, 2½ weeks into the season, it’s clear this is a deeper, stronger Bruins lineup than most pundits (hand up here) expected.
To underscore that depth, the Bruins led the league in goals (39) as of Saturday morning, those strikes delivered across the lineup (15 players). David Pastrnak, iterations of his next contract being revised every shift, also led the league scoring chart as of Saturday morning with his 7-10–17.
Pastrnak should cool off, though that’s hardly a fait accompli, but as of this hour his production projects to 64 goals and 155 points. For those still hanging on to their receipts for 35-cent Garden pizza, Phil Esposito set his career high of 152 points with the Bruins in the 78-game season of 1970-71.
No one in a Bruins uniform has ever remained Espo hot for an entire season. It is also true that Esposito, though masterful around the net, never possessed Pastrnak’s torrid one-timer or his speed and slippery moves.
What we have here, in the words of Fred Cusick, is a Bruins team that is a going concern for the rest of the league. And it’s a concern that should grow even deeper with Brad Marchand poised to begin full-time, game-to-game duty as of Tuesday night in Pittsburgh, followed by franchise blue liner Charlie McAvoy in the next, say, 2-4 weeks.
“Sixty-three is going to be a fulltime player now,” said coach Jim Montgomery, when asked about Marchand’s availability for the upcoming road swing through Pittsburgh, Manhattan, and Toronto. “And then 73 [McAvoy], he’s tracking ahead, but not like 63.”
McAvoy, recovering from offseason shoulder surgery, still wore a red (noncontact) sweater in his most recent full-team workout. Before
rejoining the fray, he’ll need at least 2-3 days of full prep.
As of Friday night, following the club’s first shutout of the season, the one nagging concern remained David Krejci, who was felled by a Michael Rasmussen sideboard swipe during Thursday’s 5-1 thumping of the Red Wings. Per Montgomery, the club needs to see Krejci’s “imaging” test results before determining how long the 36year-old will be absent from the lineup.
Prior to leaving Nationwide Arena Friday night, Montgomery said the club would have more to say about Krejci on Saturday. However, he gave his hard-working charges the full weekend off — prompting a Vesuvius-like eruption inside the dressing room after the win — and it’s likely official word on Krejci’s status won’t be made public until Monday’s morning workout in Brighton.
Krejci, hunkered over in pain as he skated off the ice in the wake of getting popped by the 6-foot-6-inch Rasmussen, suffered what the club only would say was an “upperbody” injury. No word whether he took the brunt of Rasmussen’s blow to his head or shoulder, and no word what required “imaging.” Remarkably, with availability of some of the club’s top talent, shall we say, spotty across the first nine games, Montgomery has found a way to keep up the winning beat.
Some of that has been because of the superb netminding of Linus Ullmark, who turned back 30 Blue Jackets shots Friday for his second shutout since signing on as a free agent in the summer of 2021. Ullmark, now 6-0-0, has a 1.70 GAA and an otherworldly .945 save pct., the kind of numbers another ex-Sabres netminder, Dominik Hasek, posted across his six-Vezina career.
“Unreal how comfortable that makes things for me behind the bench,” noted Montgomery. “We’re giving up odd-man rushes, and there’s guys open on the back door, and you’re not even worried because we just expect our goalies to make saves.”
. . .
The blanking in Columbus extended the Bruins’ winning streak to five games, in which they outscored the opposition, 18-6. They scored the opening goal in all but one (Minnesota) of those five, and rolled up a humongous advantage in aggregate lead time: 173:53 to 1:17. For the nine games, they have led for 329:41 and trailed only 50:46 . . . Following the three-game roadie, the Bruins finally return to Garden ice for a pair (Nov. 7 vs. the Blues and Nov. 10 vs. the Flames). They remain perfect (6-0-0) on Causeway Street . . . Guess for upcoming goalie starts: Ullmark vs. the Penguins and Maple Leafs, and Swayman vs. the Rangers . . . It will be their toughest three-game test of the season, followed by another during Thanksgiving week when they play in Tampa and Sunrise prior to Black Friday’s 1 p.m. matinee vs. the Hurricanes on Causeway . . . With 16 points already banked, the Bruins could dip to .575 efficiency across the remaining 73 games and still finish with 100 points.