With the top-seeded Flyers closing out the Canadiens Friday night, the Bruins now know that their second-round opponent will be the second-seeded Lightning, and that the series will begin Sunday night at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.
The Flyers will face the Islanders in the Eastern Conference's other second-round series. You can find the full schedule for Bruins vs. Lightning at the bottom of this post.
Boston and Tampa Bay are no strangers, and they're certainly not friends. They've already played each other once in the Toronto bubble in the round-robin seeding tournament, and they also played each other in two of their last four regular-season games before the pause in March.
There's no shortage of bad blood between the two. Back on March 7, four days after the Bruins had seemingly put an end to the race for the No. 1 seed with a 2-1 win in Tampa, the two sides used the occasion of a rematch to settle some scores, with emotions boiling over to the tune of 94 combined penalty minutes, including four fighting majors, six roughing minors, seven misconducts of varying sorts, and one complete line brawl.
The Bruins' comeback effort ultimately came up short in a 5-3 loss, but the final score isn't really what the game would be remembered for.
The rivalry continued two weeks ago in the round-robin. The Bruins fought back from a 2-0 first-period hole to tie the game early in the third, only to then give up a late winning goal to Tyler Johnson after a defensive breakdown.
That game featured a fight between Torey Krug and Blake Coleman, a near-fight between Charlie McAvoy and Brayden Point, and a hit by Barclay Goodrow to the head of Anders Bjork that the Bruins weren't happy about.
2 minutes for this hit? Alright then pic.twitter.com/8E9oLcihFt
— P-Word Blackburn (@PeteBlackburn) August 5, 2020The Bruins haven't had to face Steven Stamkos in any of those last three matchups, and they may not have to in this series either, at least to start. Stamkos was dealing with a core muscle injury at the time of the pause, then reportedly suffered some sort of leg injury in July during voluntary workouts.
The Lightning were initially hopeful that he would be ready by the start of the first round, but then he missed the entire first round and the last update from coach Jon Cooper was that he is "out indefinitely."
Despite not having Stamkos, the Lightning managed to avenge their embarrassing first-round loss to the Blue Jackets last year by beating Columbus in five games, though it was a hard-fought series featuring the famous five-overtime win that postponed a Bruins-Hurricanes game, another overtime win, and two other one-goal wins.
Point scored both overtime winners and had four goals and three assists in the series, while linemate Nikita Kucherov also had seven points on a goal and six assists. Tampa's third line of Goodrow, Yanni Gourde and Blake Coleman was also crucial in the series, and could be again against the Bruins.
Here is the full schedule for the series. Of particular note, there are two scheduled back-to-backs if the series goes seven games, which is both rare and probably not ideal for either team given that neither will want to use their backup goalie. The Bruins are locked into Jaroslav Halak as their No. 1 guy now, and the Lightning have long been locked into Andrei Vasilevskiy.
Game 1: Sunday, Aug. 23, 8 p.m. ET (NBC)
Game 2: Tuesday, Aug. 25, 7 p.m. ET (NBCSN)
Game 3: Wednesday, Aug. 26, 8 p.m. ET (NBCSN)
Game 4: Friday, Aug. 28, 7:30 p.m. ET (USA Network)
Game 5 (if necessary): Sunday, Aug. 30, Time TBD (TBD)
Game 6 (if necessary): Tuesday, Sept. 1, Time TBD (TBD)
Game 7 (if necessary): Wednesday, Sept. 2, Time TBD (TBD)
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