Four Questions Boston needs to answer in order to win against the Maple Leafs

Oh Toronto. Our old friend. Our erstwhile foe.

How I love to hate you. How I hate to see you and your absolutely apoplectic fanbase that cannot fathom hockey being something their team being willing participants in. How I enjoy watching you fail and refuse to learn the lessons over and over and over.

So I guess I enjoy watching the Bruins play them. Weird how that works.

The Bruins and the Leafs matchup once again to potentially end each other’s season for the 4th time over the past two decades, and the B’s have triumphed every time so far. It’s been a war, however; Game 7 seems inevitable at this point; no matter how dominantly either side wins Game 1. Further, in spite of the records, the Bruins are about as mortal as any team who threatened to win the division this year can be, and the Leafs decided they were going to play some of their best hockey in the 2nd half of the year. So what do they have to do to get past these Blue and White Bloviators? How can they break their wills once again?

Simple; they just have to answer some questions about themselves, and their opponent.

Is Quality over Quantity going to work again?

I think I’ve made it abundantly clear over our check-ins that the Boston Bruins are, to put it lightly, picking their spots. That said, it seems like this year is more of an exaggeration than years past in that regard; the loss of their centers etc. etc. you know this bit by now. They don’t shoot a lot but they make those shots count. This is backed up by the math. They’re down in the bottom half of the league in shots attempts taken and unblocked shot attempts taken per 60 and are middle to slightly above average of the pack in quality. That isn’t news. It also shouldn’t shock you to learn that the Leafs have been better at that than Boston for most of the year.

If there’s any solace you can take from the regular season matchup between these two teams, it’s that Boston seems to find a way to hard counter the Leafs. Sure, the Leafs since January have been numerically a bit better than the Bruins (by the counts, anyway), but that was always kind of…true no matter what series they were in? 2018 was probably your year to beat them and then the Bruins just kinda…pulled it out there, Toronto. You sure on paper you’re actually all that and a bag of all-dressed?

This time, while the B’s are unquestionably going to be fighting uphill no matter what when it comes to offense, they’re facing a large but ultimately pretty weak defense that their forward corps can take advantage of if they’re willing to attack the middle of the ice and do what they did an awful lot of during the regular season; force Woll/Samsonov to make saves in tight.

Can you get the power play working again?

The Bruins power play has been kind of grim for a little over a month now. If there’s any opponent that could create some momentum towards fixing that; it’s the Leafs.

Toronto’s PK has been gruesome, no matter who’s in the lineup, all season long. As the playoffs sort of morphs you into your final form; the apotheosis of everything your game is, was, and ever will be, it means that a power play that isn’t awful could become a serious X-factor towards beating the Leafs. They do need to get there, though. And that means forcing that particular PK to commit to bad decisions early and often. Puck movement needs to get these guys panicking and quickly. It needs to force space to open up, and decisions made from the point cannot end up going the other way, because it’s likely a golden opportunity for the other team if they manage to split the defense.

Further, the Boston Bruins are in a unique position to get multiple penalties off of these guys, because the Toronto Maple Leafs have, at least in their minds of their fans and probably more worryingly the man in charge of the team, been losing to the same team for the past five years uninterrupted. It is very likely the Boston Bruins can suck these guys into making extremely stupid decisions just by existing because they both dislike them that badly and have an idea of what they are that may not necessarily reflect reality. The Bruins’ reputation for extracurricular hockey precedes them, and the Leafs think they are prepared.

The Bruins need to show them that it’s not only untrue, it was actively a bad idea to think that was true in the first place.

Can you shut down Matthews and Marner again?

I need to make it clear the engine that keeps the Toronto Maple Leafs moving is Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner. Whatever else I say about these players after this point is mostly fan-brain taking over. They are immensely talented hockey players that are by and large worth the money.

The issue over their money however, extends to a reality that the Leafs have had to face time and time again; the Boston Bruins seem to find a way to make their most useful players seemingly worthless when it becomes Best of 7 with the season on the line. While some of it may in fact be because they aren’t built for this (and at least in Marner’s case, I think that’s true.), the reality is that the coaching staff, whether it’s under Bruce Cassidy or Jim Montgomery, have found ways to mitigate their impact. Brandon Carlo has often been stapled to Auston Matthews, as has Hampus Lindholm.

It should work, we know that for certain, but with transition, specifically zone exits, being such a big issue for the Bruins this season it behooves them to figure out a way to make a very flawed defense into a bear trap for the two most dangerous players in blue and white. Charlie McAvoy has actually had a very rough time with Matthews in particular, and so he may be better served locking down the Tavares line so that Lindholm and Carlo can be better put to work stymying the Leafs attack where it often starts.

No but really, what are you going to do with the Goaltending

Boston’s been a bit coy about how they’re gonna deploy the goalies.

Jim Montgomery and Don Sweeney have insinuated they might actually go with platooning the goaltenders…or making a firm decision and not wavering from it.

I don’t envy either one of them right now.

They’re in a weird place with it; waiting way too long to replace your goalie when they were very obviously injured sank last year’s playoff run (Among a litany of all-timer gruesome performances. Hi Derek and Connor Clifton in Game 6.), and so doing the thing that everyone and their mother wants to see, which seems to be “Platoon the Goalies because that worked all season”, is very much on the table. If both guys are putting up the kind of .930 SV% expected of both of them, then that’s totally understandable to have such complete faith in your goaltenders.

The only downside is…is if it doesn’t work. If the series is artificially inflated by one player obviously playing better than the other and making him wait to come in to save his buddy. As of the last few games, the answer if you looked at their results, you’d probably want to put that particular experiment on ice for a series or two because Ullmark is clearly playing better than Swayman by a significant amount. The answer should be Linus Ullmark. He’s playing .920+ SV% games to Swayman’s .900 SV%, at least over the past five games. Ullmark played nearly the entire season against the Leafs and they beat them convincingly over the long term, so why shouldn’t it be him? He’s clearly the answer!

At least until he wasn’t.

So…what do you do?

Maybe you don’t wait to find out.

We’ll have to see how Coach Monty handles this tonight.