Bruins have time to rest, watch scores
No doubt like a sizable chunk of New England football fans, the Bruins did not go to work yesterday. They had a scheduled day off, which turned out to be an opportunity to savor, along with those fans, the unbelievable events in Houston the night before.
The lesson for the Bruins as they watched the Patriots’ astonishing comeback win in Super Bowl LI is that in sports, anything is possible, even hanging onto their tenuous spot in the playoff ladder.
The Toronto Maple Leafs, who stunned the B’s, 6-5, at the Garden Saturday night, earned one point last night against the New York Islanders. The Bruins are tied with the Leafs for third place in the Atlantic Division, but one more Toronto point will them on the outside looking in.
There is irony in the B’s playoff predicament: Their schedule this season has been outrageously demanding, with 54 games in the first 112 days. There were 14 sets of back-toback games and 16 instances in which they played three games in four days. Thirty of the first 54 games were on the road.
“You’re traveling, you’re playing, practice, playing, practice, playing” forward Ryan Spooner said. “It kind of takes a toll on you.”
Now and for the next few weeks, the B’s will do a lot of sitting around and waiting for their next game. The club returns to practice today and tomorrow and hosts Joe Thornton and the San Jose Sharks Thursday.
That’s followed by back-toback Garden clashes against Vancouver and Montreal on Saturday and Sunday, and then six days off before the start of a West Coast swing in San Jose a week from Sunday.
After that crazy first few months, the B’s play four times in 17 days. And unfortunately for them, it’s likely at least a couple of the clubs behind them in the Eastern Conference standings are going to grab points and jump right past them.
Even after last night’s game, Toronto has four games in hand on the Bruins. The Florida Panthers, just two points behind the B’s, have three. The Carolina Hurricanes, three points back, have four. In fact, all teams behind the B’s in the East have played fewer games.
Still, the B’s plan to enjoy their time off. They can’t control what other teams do the next couple weeks, and they know they have little or no margin for error the rest of the way.
“In the months of December and January, we played every second day for the most part,” Spooner said. “It was hard on us. . . . In this month, we play (10) games. So yeah, it kind of stinks. We’ve got a team behind us with five games in hand, and we’re going to be gone for a week and they’ll be playing three games in that time. We’ve got to sit around and hope they lose.
“That’s not something that you really want to do in this sport. You want to control what you can. But we still have time, 27 games left. We just need to play well and win a lot of games.”
It’s bound to be frustrating when the team shuts down entirely for five days next week. All teams are required to have a “bye week” during the season.
“It’s nice to get a break,” Spooner said. “I think a lot of guys are going on trips and stuff like that. But at the same time, we have to stay on top of things and make sure we don’t slack off.”
The Bruins missed the playoffs last season by one point. Had they reached 94 points, they’d have edged Detroit for the third place in the Atlantic.
Using that as a benchmark, 94 points, the B’s would need to accumulate another 36 points in the standings. That’s a record of 16-7-4, with no guarantee that would be good enough to avoid missing the post-season for a third successive season.
But they certainly can’t do any worse than that, or their time will last many months instead of just a week. Again.