Boston Bruins
The Bruins finished second last year, and they almost won the Stanley Cup.
They are, however, not even close to being as good as the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Bruins went on one of the luckiest runs last year when they went something like 17 games straight with a point.
That put them way higher in the standings than they truly deserved to be, and due to some late season Leafs injuries allowed them to steal home ice.
But it didn’t matter, they still needed to score seven power play goals in a seven game series (no team averaged a PP goal per game in the regular season), get the help of refs in game two (one of the worst refereed professional sports events in history), and a Kadri suspension in order to win.
Any objective person can look at last year’s first round series and know the Bruins were lucky to beat the Leafs. Now the Leafs best players will all be a year closer to their peak seasons while the Bruins will be another year away from theirs.
I fully expect Boston to be a decent team, but their days as a powerhouse are over.