Bruins, Islanders play nearly identical styles

When the Boston Bruins look in the mirror, they see the New York Islanders. “We’re playing ourselves a little bit,” Boston coach Bruce Cassidy said of the Bruins’ second-round playoff opponent. “They have a lot of our attributes. They want to be structured, they want to play with discipline, they have good goaltending.”

The same goes for the Islanders, who will open their best-of-sevem series in Boston on Saturday night. The Bruins may have a slight edge with home-ice advantage and a little more firepower, but players and coaches on either side expect the East Division series to be a grind.

“We’re straight-line hockey teams,” Islanders defenseman Scott Mayfield said. “It’s two similar hockey teams, and it’s going to be a battle.”

Half of these teams’ regular-season meetings were one-goal games, which fits the tightness of playoff hockey, particularly this year. Three of Boston’s and four of New York’s first-round games were also decided by a goal.

As Islanders coach Barry Trotz likes to say, these teams are “comfortable being uncomfortable” in close games and figure on more of them coming up soon.

“We saw that in the season series. A lot of tight games except maybe one or two,” Bruins captain Patrice Bergeron said. “It was really tight-checking, structured hockey, and I think that’s what we’re expecting.”

While the teams are similar, there is a difference in goal.

Boston’s net belongs to Tuukka Rask, who stopped 159 of 169 shots against Washington in the first round. The 2014 Vezina Trophy winner as the league’s top goaltender is looking to backstop the Bruins to a third Stanley Cup Final in six years.

For the Islanders, rookie Ilya Sorokin made his NHL playoff debut in Game

1 of the first round against Pittsburgh because veteran Semyon Varlamov was injured. Sorokin got the net back in Game 4 with the Islanders trailing in the series and was their best player against the Penguins.