When the NHL season was suspended, the Bruins had the best record (44-14-12). But the team will not be the first or second seed when the 16 team playoff starts next week. This is because the NHL did a round-robin tournament for the top four teams in order to give the warm-up games some meaning and playoff implications. Unfortunately for the Bruins, the team dropped the ball in the round-robin and with losses to the Philadelphia Flyers on Sunday and the Tampa Bay Lightning on Wednesday.
Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy was very candid about the situation. “That part sucks. I’m not going to lie to you,” Cassidy said. “But that’s the situation this year with the stoppage in play. We knew the rules coming into it, that we would lose a bit of the advantage we gained. We are where we are now. We’re just trying to win a hockey game right now, get our game together so we can be our best, no matter who we meet.”
While this is less of a big deal for hockey than it would be in other major sports considering the high variability of the NHL playoffs and the higher likelihood for upsets this is still clearly disappointing for the Bruins from a confidence standpoint since they no longer hold the undisputed favorite title going into the playoffs. Obviously, there is still time to recover from this and get back on track but in a sport where momentum plays a special role, it feels like we may see an earlier exit than planed for the Bruins. “Would I rather be No. 1? Keep it? Absolutely. But that’s not going to happen,” Cassidy said. “You gotta win 16 games. We knew that going in. That’ll still be our goal.”
