Bruins-Sens series a true toss-up
Home-ice advantage, scoring first not exactly predictors of victory for these two teams
Forget rhyme or reason. Throw conventional hockey — or, for that matter, general sports wisdom — out the window in trying to predict what could happen in Game 6 on Sunday afternoon between the Ottawa Senators and Boston Bruins.
You could call it the Contrary Series.
Home-ice advantage? Ah, not exactly. After someone named Sean Kuraly (more on him later) narrowly beat the stroke of midnight to give the Bruins their 3-2 double-overtime win at Canadian Tire Centre on Friday, the home teams are now batting 1-for-5. That’s .200 for you baseball fans out there.
Surely, the Bruins now have momentum on their side and will be fired up by the Boston Strong crowd, right? Or maybe it works as comfort for the Senators, who have won all four playoff and regular season at the TD Garden this season. Bizarre stuff, here. And how about that other surefire predictor of victory, scoring first? Well, on that score, the team going out front has two wins and three losses.
In keeping with that theme, twogoal and three-goal leads have seemingly meant nothing in a series where every game has ended up as a one-goal victory.
In Game 2, the Bruins were in position to take a commanding 2-0 series lead before blowing a two-goal third period edge. In Game 3, the Senators tossed away a 3-0 second period advantage. Friday, on the cusp of sending the Bruins into the summer, the Senators couldn’t hold on to a 2-0 second period advantage.
Unpredictability creates drama and the emotional swings involved in three overtime games have allowed for plenty of entertainment.
Just the same, blowing big leads is inexcusable for a Senators team that spent the season patting itself on the back for its shutdown ability.
“You expect a push (from the Bruins) when you’re up 2-0, but at the same time, we kind of got away from the simple things,” said Senators winger Mark Stone, whose individual play continues to improve from game to game. “We started trying to make too many plays. We had a couple of chances to make it 3-0.”
What makes it worse for the Senators is that it wasn’t Brad Marchand or Patrice Bergeron or Zdeno Chara or David Backes or Drew Stafford or any other well-established NHL veteran who kept the Bruins alive.
It was Kuraly, whose second career NHL goal was the game-winner. His first NHL goal was the one that tied the game 2-2 in the second period.
So much for the theory that playoff success is all about experience, experience and more experience. Kuraly now has 11 big-league games on his resume.
In retrospect, inserting the pesky Kuraly into the lineup in place of Ryan Spooner was a stroke of genius by Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy.
“Those are the good ones,” Kuraly said of the game winner. “You don’t get many of those. But, hey, it bounced on my stick (Friday) and I’m happy it did.”
It’s not likely to happen in the conservative world of Senators coach Guy Boucher, but if he wanted to make a similar shakeup Sunday, he could take Boston boy Colin White away from the Black Aces and insert him into the lineup.
There is an apparent opening: Viktor Stalberg left Friday’s game with an injury in overtime.
As noted here earlier in the series, White is a good friend of Charlie McAvoy, the 19-year-old Bruins defenceman who has also shrugged his shoulders at the suggestion that experience is necessary to shine at this time of year. He had played precisely zero NHL games before stepping onto the injury-ravaged Bruins blue line for the playoffs.
He showed a couple of hiccups early in Game 5 — caught up ice on Jean-Gabriel Pageau’s breakaway goal — but he also assisted on Kuraly’s game-winner.
McAvoy’s ice time totals in the series have been 24:11, 27:47, 24:44, 25:03 and 31:14.
When Tom Pyatt was lost to injury after Game 4, Boucher went to the experience card in bringing Chris Kelly back. Yet in a Game 5 that lasted 90:19, Kelly played 7:10.
The NHL game is getting younger and younger. Yet in a series full of strange twists and turns, it’s getting longer and longer for the Senators.