Some of the many x-factors that made this historic season of Bruins hockey improbable reared their ugly heads in a devastating, seven-game ouster to the Florida Panthers that finished in most-dramatic fashion on Sunday night at TD Garden.
For awhile there, it seemed almost likely that the Bruins and the Celtics would put Boston in simultaneous NHL and NBA championship series for the first time since 1974.
The chinks in hockey armor are always revealed in the playoffs, where patches of ice turn into minefields and puck battles turn to wars. Officiating standards that made some sense in the regular season become a footnote to we weren’t good enough.
How is that possible, given the fact this 65-12-5, 135-point Boston team broke the all-time NHL wins and points records?
Chalk one up for the playoffs are a whole different animal.
The Panthers, who won the Presidents Trophy in 2022 with an albeit lesser regular-season performance, reminded us why they are good. And the offseason, widely criticized, blockbuster trade that sent Jonathan Huberdeau to Calgary and brought Matthew Tkachuk to Sunrise only made them more viable come playoff time.
Ultimately, the Bruins had no answer for the wrecking ball named Sam Bennett, an understated power forward whose efforts disrupted the Bruins’ puck-retrieval and first-pass game. Bennett’s cannon-ball forecheck, augmented by Tkachuk’s scrappy savvy and Carter Verhaeghe’s opportunism, swung the game away from the methodology so evident and so successful for 82 regular-season games.
I thought the Bruins had turned the physicality corner and become tough enough to win in the playoffs, but when the pucks were 50-50 the Panthers kept coming up with them. They were able to simplify and make the winning plays, including the final two, the one that with less than a minute remaining tied Game 7 and, finally, Verhaeghe’s overtime series winner.
The Bruins, for all their skill, passed up on their more-organic looks at the Florida net and then forced shots when those supposedly better plays failed to materialize.
It was frankly maddening to watch when David Pastrnak, whom the Panthers were determined not to let beat them, finally got the puck on a 2-on-1 in Game 5 and passed to a covered linemate.
The series should have ended there, but maybe not because teams like the Florida Panthers make teams like the Boston Bruins grip their hockey sticks too hard when it comes time to make a play.
Reality check: Historically, whenever the heavier (read: more rugged) team forces a seventh game (Boston at Vancouver 2011, Los Angeles at Chicago 2014, St. Louis at Boston 2019), the heavier team tends to win.
The Bruins failed to deploy their collection of elite skaters to pressure Florida’s defensemen on puck chases. There was a time during the regular season when the addition of Pavel Zacha augmented the wheels of Charlie Coyle, Taylor Hall and Brad Marchand in a manner that made the Bruins an army of hunters.
Trent Frederic and Nick Foligno, lost on an island last season, suddenly found meaning to their game of hot pursuit, and the Bruins seemed even greater than the sum of their parts.
That crucial element dissolved at some point in the second half of the season, perhaps a byproduct of mounting injuries and the fatigue that comes with facing so many opponents jacked for the opportunity to play against them.
There should have been some cumulative effect of that forechecking pressure on Florida’s brilliant defenseman Brandon Montour, for example, but with his own season ending before his very eyes he made the play that took the series out of Boston’s grasp.
The Panthers deserved to win. They were the better team.
There are tough decisions in the days ahead for General Manager Don Sweeney, and the most-fundamental of them will be dictated by captain Patrice Bergeron’s decision on whether or not to come back. He told a swarm of reporters after Game 7 that he’ll take time with his family to discuss his future.
Bergeron played the series with a herniated disc that he says will not require surgery, but by now everyone seems to know his decision is more about what’s going on off the ice.
The salary cap won’t escalate like the Bruins would hope, and they will carry over $4 million in bonus overages into next season’s equation. That will make it extra hard to compete for the free agents they acquired at the trade deadline.
Would it be worth moving out players to make permanent places for the likes of Dmitry Orlov and Todd Bertuzzi? Easier said than done. Both are in line for a haul in the open market.
The what now’s will linger. In the meantime, it was a memorable and tremendous six months of Bruins hockey, unfortunately augmented by a couple of weeks of erosion consequentially exploited by a relentless opponent that will now try to repeat its accomplishment against a very talented Toronto team.
Go Celtics.
Mick Colageo writes about hockey for The Standard-Times. Follow him on Twitter @MickColageo.
This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: Boston Bruins season ends with Game 7 loss to Florida Panthers
