Round Robin finale will determine Bruin’s playoff foe
The Bruins’ complaints about the once- in- a- lifetime playoff format are understandable. For roughly 7/8s of the regular season, the B’s were the best team in the league by a good margin, and you can see why they might feel a little more entitled to the top seed than any other team.
But thus far in this roundrobin, the B’s as much as any team have proven that they’ve desperately needed these meaningful tuneup games in order to regain their form. Through two games and one exhibition contest, they’ve yet to look like the team they were in March.
They have one more chance to grab a win when they play the Washington Capitals on Sunday at high noon in Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena bubble, but more importantly it’s one more chance improve their play and get that warm and fuzzy feeling before they jump into a best- of- seven elimination series.
What’s on the line in this one is pretty simple. Win and the B’s play the seventh-seeded New York Islanders, lose and face the sixthseeded Carolina Hurricanes.
At a glance, the Canes would appear to be the better of the two prospective opponents. They have the Twin Finns, Sebastian Aho and Teuvo Teravainen, plus a budding superstar in Andrei Svechnikov up front and one of the league’s top young defensemen in Jaccob Slavin, all of whom played big roles in Carolina’s sweep of the Rangers. They also have some pretty good motivation after being swept themselves last year at