The Tampa Bay Lightning are damn good. They’ve got depth, starpower, and leadership on both sides of the puck, a Vezina finalist between the pipes, and a solid coach who knows how to get the best out of his players behind the bench. All that being said, this one stung. As a Bruins fan, I had high hopes coming into the playoffs, and rightfully so. I don’t think anyone who saw this team during the regular season would have predicted a second-round, 5-game exit for the high-flying Bruins.
If you look exclusively at the Tampa series, it’s not difficult to be disappointed, especially considering the overwhelming potential of this young Boston squad. In the face of a very good opponent, Boston failed to apply consistent 5-on-5 pressure, was outhit, and turned the puck over in spades. The Bs went up 1 game to none and then proceeded to drop 4 straight, including a pair on home ice. I’m not sure how you can look at that and be satisfied with the way the season came to a close. The fact that 2 of those losses came at TD Garden erases any possible excuse along the lines of “if only we’d won the last game of the season and locked up the #1 seed in the East.” Yeah, Game 5 would’ve been at home, but Boston has never come back from down 3-1 in its long, illustrious history, and I don’t feel so confident betting that this year would’ve been the year to break the trend.
On the other hand, another--more accurate--way to view this year’s Bruins is as a young buzzsaw that just happened to meet another elite team in the second round. Due to the change in the NHL’s playoff format, the two best teams in the East met in the conference semis as opposed to the conference finals. The Bruins would certainly have had a better shot against the Caps or Pens; would we be reacting as described above if they’d fallen the same way in the Eastern Conference Finals as opposed to in the second round? I don’t think so.
Let’s remember that this team was allegedly in the “rebuilding” phase coming into the season, and it turned out to have the best line in all of hockey, lose a mere 20 regulation games, and finish 2nd in the Eastern Conference with 112 points. I won’t go so far as to say that everything in the postseason was just gravy (because it wasn’t), but let’s not take for granted what this team was able to achieve in the grand scheme of things. Here’s the bottom line: The Boston-Tampa series didn’t play out nearly as competitively as many (including myself) hoped, but the Bruins had an unbelievably impressive season on the whole. They got a tough draw in the playoffs, and they didn’t rise to the occasion.
But all is not lost. The future is extremely bright; Don Sweeney has assembled a franchise with arguably the best young defenseman (the rookie of the year, in my opinion) and coach in the league alongside a slew of talented vets and youngsters. The Bergeron-Chara-Krejci window probably has at least one more season left before it closes, and the only difficult decisions the Boston brass should be making in the next few years is who not to sign long-term.
The one thing that’ll stick with me is how soft Tampa Bay is as a hockey city. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around a warm-weather hockey fan base, especially if the hometown arena bans opposing teams’ jerseys in certain seating…
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