With 14 games left, the Bruins are all but assured of making the playoffs. If they didn’t earn another point the rest of the way the 93 points they currently have would still have been enough to secure a wild-card berth last year.
If the season ended today, Boston would be the No. 2 seed in the Atlantic Division, facing the Toronto Maple Leafs in the first round. Given their historic playoff and recent regular season success against the Leafs, that probably isn’t a bad situation.
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The Bruins still have a shot at both the Presidents Trophy, the best record in the Eastern Conference and Atlantic Division title, but they’d have to leapfrog the Florida Panthers for all of those.
Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said the Bruins, after exiting the postseason in the first round after earning the Presidents’ Trophy last year, said with the playoffs assured, he’s trying to build his team’s play, not its point total.
“For us, the preparation for playoffs started when we hit March 1st,” he said. “All we care about is building our team, getting as consistent as we can be to get to what we think is our team identity that can give us success in the playoffs.”
Montgomery said he doesn’t expect the Bruins to sit key players for any games.
“Our schedule is pretty favorable now. We have the most games-played in the league so we have the most days off before playoffs start. What we do is probably monitor practice time,” he said. “Guys missing time, we tried that last year. We had a huge comfortable lead and guys in their mid 30′s. We don’t have that as much this year and (Brad) Marchand does not like to miss games.”
He did say he’d monitor Marchand’s playing time and potentially reduce it slightly in the final weeks.
Here are the standings and what the Bruins are facing in the final five weeks:
Eastern Conference
……………………GP—W-L-OT—Pts
Florida…………67—45-18-4—94
Boston…………68—39-14-15-93
Rangers……….66—43-19-4—90
Carolina……….66—40-20-6—86
Atlantic Division
……………………GP—W-L-OT—Pts
Florida…………67—45-18-4—94
Boston…………68—39-14-15-93
Toronto…………65—38-19-8-84
Presidents’ Trophy
……………………GP—W-L-OT—Pts
Florida…………67—45-18-4—94
Boston…………68—39-14-15-93
Vancouver…….67—42-17-8—92
NY Rangers……66—43-19-4—90
Bruins Games Left: 14
Home Games: 6
Road Games: 8
Games vs. Eastern Conference: 13
Games vs. Western Conference: 1
Games against teams in playoff before Friday Games: 9
Games against non-playoff teams before Friday Games: 4
Games vs. Likely Playoff Teams
Saturday vs. Philadelphia (72 points in 68 games)
Thursday vs. New York Rangers (90 points in 66 games)
March 23 at Philadelphia
March 26 at Florida (94 points in 67 games)
April 2 at Nashville (77 points in 66 games)
April 4 at Carolina (86 points in 66 games)
April 6 vs. Florida
April 9 vs. Carolina
Games vs. Fighting for playoff spot teams
March 27 at Tampa (76 points in 66 games)
March 30 at Washington (71 points in 65 games)
Mon Apr 15 at Washington
Games vs. Playing out the string teams
March 19 vs. Ottawa (58 points in 64 games)
April 13 vs. Pittsburgh (67 points in 65 games)
April 16 vs. Ottawa
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