Realistically speaking, the Bruins’ season ended the way it should have. At the end of the day, the Bruins fell in the second round against a better, more complete, deeper team. But that second-round fall also came in the fashion that you would’ve perhaps bet on being the most likely ending back in September, again in February, and even at times during their first-round win over the Maple Leafs.
When push came to shove, the Bruins simply didn’t have enough pop.
Operating with an absolutely ravaged salary cap after a failed ‘all in’ 2022-23 year, and wading through a frozen trade market that forced you to choose between relief or market value returns (the Bruins opted for the former when they sent Taylor Hall to Chicago for two AHL defensemen), Bruins general manager Don Sweeney stressed value over all else in free agency. Not that he had any other option.
And while that value delivered more than anybody could’ve expected in what was a 109-point season, Boston’s second-round series against the Panthers exposed its limitations.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – MAY 17: in Game Six of the Second Round of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs at the TD Garden on May 17, 2024 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo by Rich Gagnon/Getty Images)
Looking at how Boston’s season ended, the Bruins spent the final three games of their series with Morgan Geekie as David Pastrnak’s center. Geekie did his best to deliver (he scored in Boston’s Game 5 win), but it was a three-line jump from Geekie’s role as a fourth-line pivot with Seattle a year ago, and a two-line jump from what was Geekie’s best fit in what was a career-year with the Bruins during the regular season.
Against the likes of Aleksander Barkov and Sam Bennett, that was a gigantic ask.
Geekie would find himself on the ice for the game-winning goal against in both Games 4 and 6. The former coming off an offensive-zone faceoff loss, while the Game 6 game-winning goal against saw Geekie unable to win a one-on-one battle behind the Florida net right before play went the other way.
This is not something you can hold against Geekie in any respect, but rather the role that Geekie was forced to play in the first year of the post-Bergeron/Krejci era of Bruins hockey.
Geekie absolutely gave you as much as you could’ve asked, but going against a deeper, more-skilled center depth chart was always going to an uphill climb. Barkov made it an upmountain climb for Geekie and his line.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – MAY 10: Justin Brazeau and Niko Mikkola compete for a loose puck during the second period in Game Three of the Second Round of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs at TD Garden on May 10, 2024. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
Scoring as a whole proved to be a massive issue for the Bruins in this series, too.
Following the Black and Gold’s series-opening win in Sunrise, which featured five goals in total, the Bruins would score just eight goals over the next five games. Not a single player scored multiple goals over that 8-in-5 stretch, and the group of players with zero goals to their name over that stretch included Brad Marchand (29 goals during the regular season), Trent Frederic (18 goals during the regular season), Danton Heinen (17 goals during the regular season), James van Riemsdyk, and Justin Brazeau. Seven players in total went without a single point over those final five games, too.
The Bruins also had a natural conflict of sorts in the sense that they did not believe they were a ‘shot volume’ team, and they coached their team as such. That led to a five-game downfall that saw the Bruins average a mere 20.2 shots per game (worst among the eight second-round clubs), and though the Bruins averaged the second-most high-danger chances per 60, they generated the lowest high-danger goals per 60, at 0.8. The Bruins were beating Sergei Bobrovsky from distance and with second-chance looks, and it simply didn’t feel like the Bruins generated enough of that.
The conflict there came from the fact that the Bruins by all means built a team designed to throw a shot on goal and score on the chaos that followed. (There’s no other reason to ice a bottom-six forward group with van Riemsdyk, Brazeau, and Pat Maroon all in there at the same time if that wasn’t the idea.) But the Bruins instead chose to try to become a skill team when their roster construct directly went against such a belief, and the results (both in terms of the lack of production and lack of generating much of anything) exposed that over the final five games of the series.
But, again, with so much firepower out the window last summer, the Bruins were always going to ice an offense that had its high highs and low lows. The hope was that its supporting cast wouldn’t go cold at all once. But, it did. And seemingly with a helping hand from a failure to adjust its strategy against a leakier-than-usual goaltender.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – NOVEMBER 09: David Pastrnak #88, Mason Lohrei #6, and Brad Marchand #63 of the Boston Bruins look on during the first period against the New York Islanders at TD Garden on November 09, 2023. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
One of the most glaring problems for the B’s in this series came back down to their struggles on the man advantage, with the Bruins going a woeful 1-for-16 on the power play. That 6.3 percent success rate was the worst among all second-round teams. And honestly, the Boston power play wasn’t just bad and ineffective, it was a legitimate momentum crusher for the club.
When it comes to Boston’s power-play struggles, a lot of people are quick to point to the 2011 playoffs and how bad the Black and Gold’s power play played back then. Yes, it was a pretty terrible power play (11.4 percent, to be exact), but the power play did come through with some key goals when the club needed it throughout their playoff run, and especially in the Stanley Cup Final.
That relief never came in this series against the Panthers.
In fact, the Bruins fumbled power-play opportunities in key moments throughout this series, including in Games 3, 4, and 6. With the way this game is going, and with the ways penalties have been on the rise in recent postseasons, having a power play that clicks at under 10 percent is just plain unacceptable.
May 12, 2022; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Boston Bruins fans Haley Mossa and Julia Wholey wave a flag before a game against the Carolina Hurricanes at the TD Garden. (Brian Fluharty/USA TODAY Sports)
After losing three of four home playoff dates in Jim Montgomery’s first postseason behind the bench back in 2023, the Bruins broke even in their first-round series with the Maple Leafs with a 2-2 home record, but then dropped all three home dates in their second-round date with the Panthers.
Speaking during the series, Montgomery admitted that he ‘didn’t know’ why the Bruins struggled to get up for home dates with the stakes at their highest this time of year, but seemed to indicate that he didn’t necessarily believe that home-ice advantage meant as much now as it did back in the day.
Even so, this was a historically bad playoff run for the Bruins at TD Garden.
Boston’s 2-5 record on home ice was actually tied for Boston’s worst home-ice playoff run (minimum six games), ‘matching’ a 2-5 record at the Boston Garden during the 1994 Stanley Cup Playoffs. (The Bruins also went 2-5 at ‘home’ during the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs, which were played inside the Toronto bubble.)
A failure to ‘get up’ for home games is something that’s plagued this team over multiple coaching staffs, and it’s something that’ll ultimately prevent this team from getting to where they want to go until it’s rectified. Go back to 2011. That team went 10-3 at home. Even the 2013 team that ultimately fell short went 8-4. You’re simply not going to win a damn thing if you can win the most important games in your own building.
