A Look Ahead To The Playoffs: Bruins vs Canadiens

Rick Stephens

April 8, 2008

Habster:

Take a deep breath hockey fans, can you smell it!!!…….no it’s not spring, it’s the NHL playoffs and they’re just around the corner. Just looking around Montreal or for that matter the entire province and you’ll see or even feel the excitement surrounding the Montreal Canadiens being in the playoffs. Whether it’s the Habs flags flying from thousands of car windows (boy, would I love to own the company making those things, $25 a pop!!) or the high spirit or joy of everybody you meet on the street, it’s absolutely contagious.

As joyous and wonderful it is to be back in the “big show”, it’s going to be a long endurance race to the finish line where the Stanley Cup will be awaiting the winner or shall I say the survivor of one of toughest championships to win in sports. “16 for 16” should be the theme or motto on the eve of the NHL playoffs………sixteen teams striving for sixteen difficult victories is basically what separates the pretenders from the contenders for Lord Stanley’s cup.

The Stanley Cup playoffs start on Wednesday night and for two teams, the journey will be hard fought with nothing less than total commitment from every player to reach the pinnacle of the NHL.

“You know, the playoffs are a grind,” Josh Gorges told Canadian Press. “You ask anybody that’s been through any type of playoffs, it’s never easy. It’s a battle of attrition and I think the team that wants it the most and the team that prepares the hardest and does what it takes is the team that ultimately is successful.”

With that being said, let’s take a closer look at the Boston/Canadiens series:

Boston Bruins (#8) vs Montreal Canadiens (#1)

This series appears to be a mismatch based on the regular season record between these two teams but anyone who thinks this series will be a cakewalk is sadly mistaken in judgement. It’s true the slate is wiped clean once the playoffs start though with that being said, we have to base any analyst on the regular season games and past playoff history.

Offense and Special teams

The Canadiens did totally dominate the Bruins in every possible offensive or special teams category during the head to head games. They outscored the Bruins by a large margin (39-16) and had great success on the powerplay against them as well, going 10 for 34 for a 29.4% success rate. The Bruins were only 3 for 31 on the powerplay or a minuscule 9.7% success rate.

To make matters worst, the Bruins are one of the worst penalty killing teams in the NHL with a 78.6% success rate which ranks them 28th in the league. On the flip side, the Canadiens have the best powerplay unit in the league ( 90/374 = 24.1%) which makes for a bad combination for the Bruins. Add in the fact that the Habs are the faster, more skilled team and have the potential to draw a lot of penalties against a slower Bruins defense.

There will be some so-called hockey pundits who believe that avoiding penalties and/or having a stronger PK will greatly help the Bruins beat the Habs in this series. It would certainly help their chances of beating the Habs but the Canadiens still had 29 even strength goals (one goal was scored shorted handed) against the Bruins which works out to 3.63 goals per game….not exactly encouraging news for the Bruins even if they stay out of the sin bin.

Speaking of the “sin bin”, the Canadiens have also greatly improved their penalty killing over the last 8 games of the season, slowly crawling up the NHL rankings (they were ranked 24th only a few weeks ago and finished the year at 15th) thanks largely to players like Steve Begin, Tom Kostopoulos and Bryan Smolinski to name a few.

The Canadiens also led the league in goals scored with 262 while the Bruins had 212 goals which ranks them 24th in the NHL. Boston has a hard time scoring goals and will play a “rope a dope” type of game where they will wait patiently for any mistakes by the Canadiens. If the Bruins abandon their tight checking/neutral zone trap game and fall into a wide open, run and gun game, then it will be a quick exit from the playoffs for Beantown. They just can’t match the Canadiens overall team speed and skill.

Add into the mix, the fact the Canadiens will run four lines with a very balanced offensive attack, something the Bruin will have a difficult time doing with the likes of Shawn Thornton, Jeremy Reich, Vladimir Sobotka and Petteri Nokelainen playing fourth line minutes.

Offense and Special teams: Huge edge goes to the Canadiens as they have the better PK, PP, offensive weapons and balanced attack than the Bruins so they have an obvious edge in these areas.

Defense

Both teams gave up 222 goals during the regular season and there isn’t as much disparity between the defense corps as there is with the forwards. As a group, the Canadiens might have a slight edge if Mike Komisarek and Francis Bouillon return to the lineup for the series while the Bruins will get a boost with defenseman Andrew Alberts rounding into playing shape (he played the last 3 regular season games) after missing part of the season with a concussion. The possible return of Andrew Ference and Bobby Allen will also help the Bruins cause with some much needed foot speed on the blueline. Aaron Ward and Zdeno Chara are very solid playoff performers who understand what it takes to win in the playoffs and should be a steadying factor for the younger players.

The key to any playoff series will always be the match-up situations especially on defense. Here is where the Canadiens have the edge and it all points back to their huge advantage with their depth at the forward position. The Canadiens can shutdown the Bruins top two lines with the Komisarek/Markov and Hamrlik/O’Byrne tandems while the Bruins will have a more difficult time containing the Canadiens top three lines.

Overall, both teams are getting healthier on the blueline and there isn’t as much of an advantage either way. The Canadiens have the edge when it pertains to manufacturing offense on the back end, regular season head to head performances and foot speed while the Bruins have the edge in overall size and physicality on defense (especially if Komisarek doesn’t return to the Habs lineup).

Defense: slight edge to the Canadiens for their very solid regular season performance against the Bruins while the same can’t be said about Boston’s performance against the Habs.

Goaltending

The bottomline is simple, without solid if not spectacular goaltending, most teams will not advance very far in the playoffs. Just ask the Senators how comfortable they are with their goaltending situation going into the 2008 playoffs…….not very comfortable!!!

The goaltending is a slightly unknown playoff quantity for both teams but once again if the regular season is any indicator then Carey Price and Tim Thomas should play positive roles for their teams. Both goaltenders have no prior NHL playoff experience which is the unknown factor going into this series .

Carey Price does have the pedigree of winning and performing in high pressure situations like backstopping Team Canada to a World Junior Championship in 2007 and leading the Hamilton Bulldogs to a Calder Cup Championship in the same year…………no small accomplishments!!! With these pressure packed situations under his belt and his calm, cool disposition to go with it, there shouldn’t be any let down in his stellar play going into the playoffs.

Carey Price has had an unbelievable rookie season (24-12-3 .920 save % and a 2.56 GAA) with only Tom Barrasso, Patrick Roy and Ken Dryden getting more than 20 wins in their rookie seasons. He has also been absolutely lights out for the Canadiens since Bob Gainey traded Cristobal Huet to the Capitals at the trade deadline. During the post Huet era, Price is 12-3 with a 2.13 GAA and a .936 save percentage, needless to say, Carey Price is in a groove. Can you remember another Habs goalie in the Martin Brodeur era who actually beat the goaltending legend twice in one season?…….I didn’t think so!!!

The Bruins also have an inexperienced playoff commodity in Tim Thomas heading into their series against the Canadiens. Thomas has also had a very good season (28-19-6 2.41 GAA and a .921 save %) and has played well against every team except the Canadiens which has to be slightly disconcerting for the Bruins. Thomas’ statistics against the Canadiens are downright awful: GP-6 GA-24 Save %.877 (171/195) and a GAA of 4.00…..not reassuring numbers by any means.

Thomas can play well if the defense in front of him wasn’t so porous in the games against the Habs. He was left alone quite often (Kovalev’s two highlight reel goals come to mind) and didn’t get too much support from his teammates. Don’t get me wrong, he was soft on some of the goals as well and will need to be substantially better if the Bruins are to advance past the Canadiens in the first round.

Goaltending: the Canadiens have the better goaltending with the Price/Halak tandem vs the Thomas/Auld duo and if the regular season trend continues into the playoffs, it will be a short lived playoff series.

The Intangibles

There are a few intangibles which could play a significant role in the series:

Will both teams get some key players back from injuries and how much of a contribution will they make in the playoffs? Players like Bergeron, Savard, Bouillon, Koivu, Komisarek and Ryder……who plays and how well?

Canadiens and Bruins playoff inexperience: the Canadiens and the Bruins have two of the least playoff experienced teams of the 16 current playoff teams. There are some savvy playoff players like Roman Hamrlik(55), Alex Kovalev(100), Saku Koivu(43), Bryan Smolinski(100), Mathieu Dandenault(70) and Patrice Brisebois(87) but beyond this group there are some rather inexperienced young players. The Bruins have even less experience throughout their lineup with 11 players never playing in the NHL playoffs. The Habs have 10 players who have never played in an NHL playoff game. As Bob Gainey stated, it will be a crash course in “playoffs 101” for some of his players.

Can the Bruins get beyond the obvious psychological playing edge the Canadiens hold over them with 11 straight wins and a totally dominate regular season performance against them.
Guy Carbonneau’s playoff inexperience as a head coach.

After all is said and written on the talk shows and in the newspapers, it really all come down to who want it more, who will be willing to make more sacrifices and what team performs to it’s fullest potential on the ice………..Canadiens win this series in five at the Bell Centre.