The Boston Bruins are winning this season, but will they eventually collapse?
The Boston Bruins were expected to take a step backwards in their previous campaign, but instead they produced one of the league’s greatest regular seasons in history. But this year? This was the point at which they were meant to come off completely.
Patrice Bergeron, the greatest two-way forward in hockey history, and David Krejčí, the second half of the Bruins’ deadly one-two punch down the middle, both hung them up in the offseason. Trade deadline rentals In free agency, Dmitri Orlov, Garnet Hathaway, and Tyler Bertuzzi left, and Taylor Hall was traded for a cap dump.
Don Sweeney, general manager of the Boston Bruins, signed veteran players like James van Riemsdyk, Milan Lucic, and Kevin Shattenkirk on the cheap in addition to the younger Morgan Geekie, trying his best to fill the holes in his lineup with the limited resources at his disposal. While the betting odds gave them a slightly higher margin of error—100.5 points—fans were less forgiving, ranking them at 95 points.
Naturally, the team started strong with a 13-1-2 record, shooting to the top of the standings and making many around the league cry in the Breaking Bad actor Jesse Pinkman’s voice, “He can’t keep getting away with this.”
But as the team has lost three of its last five games, those preseason doubts have surfaced again. Is gravity starting to set in? What caused the initial outcomes, and what is this team truly capable of? Let’s investigate.
