Anderson: Laundry List Of Injuries Helps Confirm Bruins Weren’t Ready For Stanley Cup

By Ty Anderson, 985TheSportsHub.com

Even if the Bruins somehow overcame a 3-1 series deficit for the first time in their franchise's 94-year history, there was no chance that they were going to even compete with the Capitals or Penguins in the Eastern Conference Finals. No chance.

Haunted by their inability to close out their first-round series with the Maple Leafs earlier than the seven games it ultimately required, the Bruins would have been marching into the third round after back-to-back seven-game wars. And just to get there, the Bruins would have needed to exhaust all possible energy -- and then some -- to dump the East-best Lightning.

And I felt that way before the Bruins released their lengthy list of those that were playing at far less than 100 percent.

But that list, dropped one-by-one at break-up day media availability at Warrior Ice Arena, only serves as the confirmation that this year's Bruins squad, while undoubtedly appearing to possess almost every single quality you want out of a legitimately contending threat, was not fit to lift the Stanley Cup this spring. Not that their bodies would have allowed it.

Now, if you had asked me in late March, I would have told you that the Bruins were my Stanley Cup favorite. I even wrote as much back then. This was a Bruins team that was truly battle-tested, deep, and healthy.

But once that health gradually faded out of frame this postseason, those other qualities went with it.

And in the NHL, these things can flip quickly, especially when the style of play shifts to near prison rules as it often does in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. (I have nothing to back this up, but give me a radar gun and I'll prove that dudes finish their checks at least 15 miles per hour faster in the postseason than they do in the regular season.)

The Bruins were not the only team to deal with injuries in the playoffs, though, and writing this off as the sole reason why they came up short in the second round would be some prime excuse-making that belittles a Tampa Bay wagon they ran into.

"I think we all know that there’s a lot of things going on and it’s a long year, and playoffs are the same thing," B's center Patrice Bergeron acknowledged. "Guys are battling through hard things, but we’re no different than any other team, whether it’s us or the four teams remaining right now, but everyone’s kind of dealing with some issues...and that’s just the way it is."

Bergeron's right; I'm sure we're gonna hear about some Vegas psychopath playing through a torn ACL or Ryan Callahan finishing the postseason with rabies thanks to the lick his teeth received from the Bruins' Brad Marchand in Game 4.

Hockey players have forever told us that they're willing to do almost anything to have their name on the Stanley Cup.

But the Bruins did not have an answer for Bergeron missing time and playing at less than 100 percent due to concussion-like symptoms in round one and a year-long groin injury. Especially not when the Bruins' store brand of Bergeron, Riley Nash, was dealing with similar ailments, including a groin injury that had been bothering him since February. Nor did they turn out to have a suitable replacement capable of scoring Jake DeBrusk's timely goals, which came to a crashing halt as a sprained AC joint eventually and unfortunately slowed the lively DeBrusk into irrelevance by the end of the second round.