The Toronto Maple Leafs should be afraid of the Bruins.
The Bruins are big, and bad and scary, and the Toronto Maple Leafs just can’t handle “heavy” teams.
That’s the prevailing narrative. Now, don’t get me wrong: the Bruins are a good team and in a playoff series the results could go either way. These two teams are going to play in the playoffs and whoever has home-ice advantage will still have about a 48% chance of golfing early.
But that point is lost in the conversation. All I hear is that the Bruins are a team the Leafs should be scared of. Now, in the sense that they’re very good and the Leafs might not beat them, I agree.
But in the sense that the Bruins play a certain type of hockey that makes them massive favorites over Toronto, I do not agree. I think that’s an incredible over simplification.
Leafs vs Bruins
The Toronto Maple Leafs have played the Bruins four times this year. The Bruins won three times, and the Leafs just once.
Two of those games were dominant Boston Victories, but two of them were games in which the Leafs easily could have won, and, in fact, the best game the Leafs played this year against Boston was probably the game they lost 3-2.
With just a different bounce here and there, the Leafs could have an even record against them this year.
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Going back to last year, the Leafs won three games and lost one. Then they went to seven games in a series that the Leafs started on the road and had Nazem Kadri suspended for three games.
In that series, people often say that Matthews and Nylander didn’t shower up. This is factually incorrect. Despite not scoring much, they had to play most of their minutes against the best line in the NHL, and came out with a puck-possession rating over 50%. (Stats from naturlalstattrick.com).
They just had trouble scoring, due mostly to great play by Tukka Rask. Matthews’ PDO (save percentage + shooting percentage, as a measure for luck) for the series was 92 when anything under 100 is unlucky. Essentially, Matthews didn’t play any worse than he usually does, he just happened to score less over seven games than he usually does.
It seems like the Bruins actually had to get extremely lucky to beat the Leafs last year. And, don’t forget, had the upstart Leafs beat the Cup Winning, Perennial Contender that is the Boston Bruins, on the road, after a Kadri suspension, it would have been considered a massive upset.
Over the last 15 games these two teams have met, the Leafs are 7-8, while even a cursory analysis of last year’s playoff series shows the Leafs had to get very unlucky in order to lose.
To me this level of even competition does not indicate that the Bruins are better, or have even a physical advantage over the Leafs.
Last year’s playoff series would have went to Toronto if only Auston Matthews scored on a fraction of the shots he usually scores on. This year’s Bruins team is a year older, while the Leafs (a much younger team) have a year more experience.
Oh, and the Leafs added John Tavares and Jake Muzzin.
It seems to me you’d have to be an extremely pessimistic Leafs fan in order to buy into the obvious fiction that Boston is somehow their white whale.