Just the Facts
- The Time: 7pm EST
- The Place: ScotiaBank Arena – Toronto, ON
- Place to Watch: NESN, ESPN+ (outside of Boston/Toronto), SportsNet, CBC
- Place to Listen: 98.5 The Sports Hub
- An Opposing Viewpoint: Pension Plan Puppets
Game Preview
What a week.
After getting whomped by the Senators, the B’s have rattled off 5 straight impressive wins; regardless of their opponent’s relative strengths. Even when things looked bleak, one thing that
has become abundantly clear about Marco Sturm’s Bruins is that they are always, always, always battling. They might be battling themselves some nights, but they are nearly always in it. They are not perfect by a long shot, and they are almost constantly outshot, but they will never, ever make it easy. That’s an admirable trait that can make up for a lot on most nights.
Enter Toronto.
The Leafs are experiencing a less than stellar start as they did last year, the difference is that they have a much physically taller and heavier team than Leafs teams of years past. Leafs fans; puck knowledge evading them like playoff success as it always does, are both distraught that this has happened in spite of their team full of big strong boys, and get very, very mad when you point out that this is in fact what they wanted. They wanted big strong boys, they wanted Marner gone, and they wanted their coach to preach big strong boy hockey.
Sure, they may have gotten a good amount of that…but they ignore the finer details. Berube hockey is boring because they generally don’t have the puck all that often or need players like Ryan O’Reilly, Jordan Kyrou, Rob Thomas and Jordan Binnington playing out of their minds. All of their defenders are huge but they are also not especially physical to begin with and super not interested in leaving the zone under their own power. A lot of the bigger players they’re gambling on are only now starting to have better games after looking like the Depth they came from. They wanted to move on from Mitch Marner because he was the one guy in the Core 4 who was making it as easy as possible to get rid of him, and ended up completely dependent on Matthews, Nylander, Tavares, and Reilly for a lot of their scoring punch. They wanted the Wendel Clark Tulpa, and only succeeded in getting the Tulpa resembling a lot of the teams Wendel Clark used to play on. The ones that only won like 25 games a season.
You just hate to see it. ///deep, heavy sarcasm
Of course, I’m saying that as a B’s fan. From a less haterade-infused thought-process, the Leafs are also doing what they did last year in rounding into form; sitting on a three game winning streak from an offensive explosion against the Mammoth, and two very convincing games against the Pennsylvania squads; mostly on the backs of Matthews, Nylander, Tavares, and a rotating fourth guy who finds his game that particular night. They’re still very mortal as a team; they generally don’t create a lot of chances on their own and their defense is about as mobile as Boston’s depth can be, but right now their big players are being their big players and playing how you’d expect them to.
It will take a full team effort to combat the Leafs’ Nu-Core 4, but if there’s any team who can shock Toronto out of their good feelings, I can think of no better team to do it than Boston.
Let’s see what happens tonight!
