Speaking with reporters including Steve Conroy of the Boston Herald after Friday’s victory, Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery indicated that center David Krejci is 50/50 to play in Sunday’s fourth contest against the Panthers. Krejci is dealing with an upper-body injury, meaning that Boston played last night without their top two middlemen with Patrice Bergeron not expected to make his series debut until Wednesday. Krejci was an important secondary scorer for Boston this season with 16 goals and 40 assists, a solid return to the NHL after spending last season in Czechia and his return would certainly help a thinned-out center group. However, he did not take part in today’s morning skate with a final answer on his availability not expected until tomorrow; he’s officially listed as questionable.
Bruins Rumors
David Krejci Out For Game Three
Already without captain Patrice Bergeron in their lineup, the Boston Bruins have announced that another veteran center, this time David Krejci, will miss game three with an upper-body injury. At the end of the regular season, Krejci was shut down for the final two games, that time being a lower-body injury.
Delivering on a “Last Dance” style season, the Bruins handily took the NHL’s President’s Trophy, breaking the all-time win record by a team for a single season. Heading into this year’s playoffs, the Bruins were the heavy favorite to eventually win Lord Stanley’s Cup. Unfortunately for the team, they will be without not only two of their best players but two of their best leaders as they play a pivotal game three against the Florida Panthers.
Luckily for the Bruins, after acquiring such players as Dmitry Orlov, Tyler Bertuzzi, and Garnet Hathaway at the trade deadline, they should still reasonably be expected to win this series, but their pathway is becoming a lot more difficult. The Panthers delivered a decisive blow to take game two and will have the benefit of being on home ice for the next two games.
Patrice Bergeron Unlikely To Return Until Game Five
Boston Globe reporter Matt Porter tweeted out this morning that Boston Bruins captain Patrice Bergeron likely won’t return until game five in their best of seven series against the Florida Panthers. This tweet comes from a quote from Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery. Bergeron also did not travel with the team to Florida and has not dressed in any of the first two games of the series.
Bergeron was hurt in the Bruins regular season finale against the Montreal Canadiens. While much has been made of the decision to dress so many regulars in a meaningless game, it was apparently something that Bergeron wanted to do in what could have been his final NHL game in his home province. Bergeron had been resting the week prior to the game in Montreal and was also hoping to ramp up for the playoffs.
The Bruins desperately need Bergeron to return, the 37-year-old dressed in 78 games this season and had 27 goals and 58 points. He was a force for the President’s Trophy winners throughout the season and his absence in the series with the Panthers has made Boston look beatable for the first time all season. Boston split the first two games of their series with Florida and now head into game three tied 1-1.
Porter also tweeted out the Bruins line rushes from practice this morning and it appears as though Charlie Coyle will be taking Bergeron’s spot on the first line. While Coyle is a capable NHLer, he is a sizable downgrade from one of the best two-way centers in the league. Coyle had 45 points in 82 games this season but spent most of the year playing lower in the lineup. In game three Coyle could be tasked with taking on Florida’s top unit.
Boston Bruins Will Have Multi-Million Dollar Cap Penalty Next Season
The Boston Bruins’ plan of bringing back Patrice Bergeron and David Krejčí for one last ride panned out unquestionably. Unfortunately for the Bruins, they’ll need to pay a steep price for their decisions next season.
PuckPedia’s Hart Levine confirms in an article for Northstar Bets that Boston will face a $4.5MM cap penalty next season, created by performance bonus overages stemming from Bergeron and Krejčí’s unique contracts.
With Bergeron and Krejčí eligible to sign particular types of contracts reserved for players 35 or older, they’re also eligible to receive performance bonuses in their contract that are not incorporated into the cap hit of the deal. It operates in the same way as an entry-level contract, where rookies can earn millions of dollars per season based on their performance despite a six-figure cap hit.
That’s exactly what they did, with Bergeron’s contract entitling him to up to $2.5MM in bonuses, while Krejčí was eligible for up to $2MM. Thanks to Boston’s record-breaking season and subsequent playoff appearance, both players hit every benchmark required to receive all of their bonuses.
Unfortunately, since Boston used long-term injured reserve to stay cap compliant, they weren’t able to accommodate Bergeron and Krejčí’s performance bonuses under the cap at the end of the regular season. It means Boston, along with 14 other NHL teams (albeit with much smaller amounts), will have a cap charge next season equivalent to the amount of performance bonuses earned that the team couldn’t fit under the cap at the end of the season.
To put it plainly: if Bergeron and Krejčí don’t return to the team next season, Boston will have a greater cap charge next season than their combined cap hits this year ($3.5MM).
The cap is, again, expected to only creep up by a $1MM increment to an $83.5MM ceiling next year. Per CapFriendly, a $4.5MM bonus overage charge leaves Boston with just $5.288MM in space heading into the offseason, with most of their forward core needing new contracts.
Boston Bruins Recall Oskar Steen
Before their important game three against the Florida Panthers Friday evening, the Boston Bruins have announced they have recalled forward Oskar Steen on an emergency basis. So far through two games, the Bruins have been without forward Patrice Bergeron (upper-body), but have still managed to produce a deep rotation of 12 forwards.
Although managing to play about a quarter of the season in Boston last season, Steen was back to primarily back to playing for their AHL affiliate Providence Bruins for the majority of this year. In 64 games for Providence, Steen scored 14 goals and 17 assists, helping propel the baby Bruins to the Atlantic Division semifinals in the Calder Cup playoffs.
Without Bergeron in the lineup, the Bruins have found themselves in a tied series as they head into game three. They did manage to get out to an early lead in the series thanks to a 3-1 win against the Panthers on April 17th, but Florida bounced back in game two, beating the Bruins by a score of 6-3. In game one, Boston heavily relied on their Vezina candidate goaltender Linus Ullmark, who made 31 saves in 32 attempts.
As the Bruins look to take back the series, there is a chance that Steen will find himself in the lineup. Steen is another physical presence that Boston can throw into their active roster, and with strong possession numbers in his limited professional performance, Steen could help the Bruins control the puck more against a surging Panthers team.
Patrice Bergeron Likely Out For Game 2
- While Boston Bruins captain Patrice Bergeron skated on his own before practice this morning, he didn’t join the team’s full session, per The Athletic’s Fluto Shinzawa, and is expected to remain out of the lineup for Game 2 against the Florida Panthers tonight. Florida made more noise against the Bruins than most expected in the opening match, but Boston still secured a 3-1 win without their captain’s services. Bergeron is still dealing with a minor injury and illness that have sidelined him for approximately the past week.
Patrice Bergeron Out For Game 1
The Boston Bruins set several regular season records with their tremendous play this season including the most wins (65) ever in a single season and the most points (135) in the standings in NHL history as well. The Bruins have a deep roster at every position, and are poised for a long playoff run that begins tonight when they host the Florida Panthers. Unfortunately, the Bruins will be without a key member of the team for Game 1.
Patrice Bergeron will miss the opening night of the playoffs, according to Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet. Bergeron is dealing with an illness that is going around the Bruins locker room, and was unable to suit up for the opening game of the playoffs. It is impossible to overstate Bergeron’s importance to the Bruins success as he is arguably the best defensive center in the league, and also scored 27 goals and 58 points in 78 games this season.
The Bruins are deep down the middle of the ice, and will move Pavel Zacha, who had 21 goals and 57 points this season to center on the top line. David Krejci scored 16 goals and 56 points in 70 games this season, Charlie Coyle and Tomas Nosek give the Bruins impressive depth down the middle even without their top center.
Bergeron left the Bruins final regular season game after playing just five minutes, though it was said to be for precautionary reasons. An illness would signal a shorter-term absence and nothing to worry about as the playoffs progress. But, the 37-year-old missed a little time late in the season with nagging injuries and left their final game quickly just four days ago.
While the Bruins just won more regular season games than anyone, getting Bergeron back at 100% in short order would go a long way toward them reaching their ultimate goal for this season.
Nick Foligno Could Return For Game 1
- While the availability of some other Boston Bruins players is uncertain, head coach Jim Montgomery said there’s a “strong possibility” Nick Foligno returns to the lineup tonight after a months-long absence. Foligno missed the last 22 regular-season games with a lower-body injury, but his return from long-term injured reserve gives the Bruins an additional 62 games of playoff experience to inject into their lineup. He notched one assist in seven playoff games with Boston last year.
PHR Playoff Primer: Boston Bruins vs. Florida Panthers
With the start of the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs set to begin tomorrow, PHR makes its first foray into playoff series analysis with our 2023 Playoff Primers. Where does each team stand in their series, and what storylines could dominate on and off the ice? We continue our look with the Atlantic Division showdown between the Boston Bruins and Florida Panthers.
With each record that they set during their 65-win, 135-point regular season, the focus began to shift for the Boston Bruins. They’ve known they’d be making the playoffs since December, if not earlier. While other teams went to battle with the focus of securing a playoff spot, the Bruins were chasing records etched into the books by some of the NHL’s most historic teams. Now? The records have been set, their regular season is over, and they’re now in the same postseason boat as everybody else: zero wins, zero losses.
For this Boston team, making a deep run is considered the bare minimum. Anything less than a berth in the conference finals will feel like a disappointment, and it’s very likely that anything less than a Stanley Cup victory will leave fans in New England wanting more.
For the Florida Panthers, it was an uneven regular season that left them in the wholly undesirable position of being Boston’s first-round opponent. There are many who will expect these Panthers to serve as the Washington Generals to Boston’s Harlem Globetrotters, but just write them off in this series would be a mistake.
One must remember that it was just a few years ago that the Tampa Bay Lightning flirted with regular-season history, only to be swept in the first round of the playoffs against a hungry Blue Jackets team that just barely scraped their way into the playoffs. This is a scrappy Panthers team looking to move past the disappointment that defined their elimination in last year’s playoffs, led by new franchise face Matthew Tkachuk.
Will the Bruins take their first step toward a place in hockey history? Will their regular-season dominance extend to the postseason in a way it couldn’t for the 2018-19 Lightning? Or will we see another historic upset, perhaps even with reigning Calder Cup Champion Alex Lyon leading Florida to glory?
Regular Season Performance
Boston: 65-12-5, 135 points, +128 goal differential
Florida: 42-32-8, 92 points, +17 goal differential
Head-To-Head
October 17th, 2022: Boston 5, Florida 3
November 23rd, 2022: Florida 5, Boston 2
December 19th, 2022: Boston 7, Florida 3
January 28th, 2023: Florida 4, Boston 3
Series tied 2-2
Team Storylines
The Bruins are one of the NHL’s deepest, most talented teams, with a lineup full of top-end talent and valuable role players. You don’t set the NHL record for regular-season success without an elite lineup, after all. But the major question for the Bruins is something relatively out of their control: health.
They have experience, with a few players remaining from the team’s 2011 Stanley Cup victory and even more from the 2019 roster that just barely missed out on a championship. They have scoring talent, led by 61-goal, 113-point scorer David Pastrnak, defensive talent, and a goalie who posted an otherworldly .938 save percentage in the regular season.
But among those top players, there are some health-related question marks. We covered reports earlier today that Bruins captain Patrice Bergeron could miss the first game of the series, and Linus Ullmark has been dealing with an undisclosed injury in recent days, though he did practice yesterday with no restrictions.
This Bruins team is one that has 2019 Hart Trophy winner Taylor Hall listed as a third-liner, alongside Tyler Bertuzzi, who has scored 16 points in 21 games in Boston. They have a stable full of versatile, capable players who can handle any situation thrown at them. The major question, then, will be if those players can stay healthy, and if they can maintain the standard of play they set in the regular season in the more intense environment of the playoffs.
There are no roster-related question marks surrounding this Bruins team, as long as they stay healthy. The main storyline to watch for this series, from their perspective, will be availability and execution, and those are two factors that are impossible to fully evaluate before the puck is dropped tomorrow.
For Florida, the main storyline relates to their situation in their crease.
With the Panthers’ season on the line, the team turned to Lyon, an AHL netminder who won the Calder Cup with the Chicago Wolves last season.
He played extremely well, rattling off a six-game winning streak that revived Florida’s fading playoff dreams.
If the Panthers want to have any hope of pulling off the impossible and becoming the second underdog to stun a record-setting, 60-plus win team in the first round, they’ll need Lyon to play as he did during the winning streak.
They’ll also need their penalty kill to step up, as the Bruins powerplay, while inconsistent, is capable of scorching hot stretches. The Panthers’ penalty kill ranked 23rd in the NHL this season, killing 76% of opposing man advantages. The Bruins killed off 87.3%, the highest rate in the NHL by a decent margin.
While goaltending will be the main focus in this series, special teams could also be the battleground where Florida either finds a way to get ahead or ends up falling apart.
Prediction
The Panthers are a quality team whose stellar play in recent weeks rightfully earned them a spot in the playoffs. With players such as Tkachuk, and Aleksander Barkov, and an experienced coach like Paul Maurice, they’re not exactly the easiest team to bet against. The pressure the Bruins will be facing as such a successful regular-season team will be immense, and to discount how impactful that pressure could be would be a mistake.
That being said, how realistic is the possibility that these Bruins, who barely ever lose consecutive games, fall to a team potentially starting a goalie with under 40 games of NHL experience? How likely is it that the possible final act of Bergeron’s illustrious NHL career ends with a humiliating upset loss to a division rival?
The Blue Jackets proved a few years ago that anything can happen in the Stanley Cup playoffs. NHL-caliber players on any team, regardless of where they are in the standings, have it in them to find a way to win any game, regardless of the challenge posed by their opposition.
In the final game of their regular season, the basement-dwelling Montreal Canadiens held their own against and nearly beat the Bruins. But in a seven-game series? That’s a far taller task, and it seems as though the Boston will have more than enough to outlast even the fiercest of challenges from the Panthers.
The prediction: Bruins win in six games.
Photos courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
Patrice Bergeron Questionable For Game 1
Boston Bruins general manager Don Sweeney inferred on Sunday that team captain Patrice Bergeron will be a game-time decision for Game 1 of the team’s first-round playoff series against the Florida Panthers tomorrow. Sweeney confirmed that Bergeron, 37, had been dealing with both an illness and an injury. He also stated that the veteran center “doesn’t need extra days of practice” to prepare for the upcoming matchup. Bergeron recorded 27 goals and 31 assists in 78 games during the Bruins’ record-breaking regular season.
The team will likely leave the decision up to their captain, with Sweeney telling reporters, “if [Bergeron’s] feeling well enough, he’ll play.” If Bergeron cannot play, Pavel Zacha has taken line rushes between Brad Marchand and Jake DeBrusk on the Bruins’ top line during practice this weekend.