The Boston Bruins are just over a quarter of the way through the regular season with 21 games played as they head out on the road for a four-game trip starting Wednesday night in Anaheim.
It’s a good time to take a look at how they stack up so far, which is exactly what ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski did Wednesday morning in an “NHL Bubble Watch” article that caught the eye of WEEI’s Jones & Keefe.
The reason it caught their eye? It has the Bruins with only a 3.2% chance of making the playoffs, classifying them as a “long shot at best.”
“What???” asked an incredulous Rich Keefe. “They’ve played a quarter of the season. This was the talk before the year began. Aren’t they a little bit better?”
“I told you I was flabbergasted,” Adam Jones said. “You sound flabbergasted.”
“They’ve played 21 games. This isn’t a five-game sample size,” Keefe continued. “They’re one point behind Detroit in the division. I could clearly understand if one of the national hockey guys was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t think they make the playoffs.’ All right, fine. But to give them the least amount chance out of this division is pretty surprising.”
It is. Entering Wednesday night, the Bruins are second in the Atlantic Division in points and tied for fourth in the Eastern Conference with a 12-9-0 record. Because they’ve played more games than everyone else, they’re more middle of the pack in points percentage: fifth in the division, 10th in the conference.
It’s also worth noting that this isn’t necessarily Wyshynski’s personal opinion. That 3.2% comes from a Stathletes model projection. Still, it’s hard to imagine how any model could arrive at such a low number.
It likely incorporates some advanced stats like expected goals, and it is true that the Bruins are not looking great by those metrics. MoneyPuck has the Bruins 27th in expected goals percentage in all situations (46.8%), as well as 5-on-5 (45.3%).
However, MoneyPuck’s own playoff projection model, which also incorporates analytics, has the Bruins with a 43.1% chance to make the playoffs.
That makes a lot more sense. The Atlantic Division, and the Eastern Conference as a whole, is just way too bunched together right now to make any definitive predictions about a team that is right in the thick of it, especially since the Bruins have won eight of their last 10 games.
It’s also interesting that Wyshynski highlights the Bruins’ offense as a “cause for concern.”
“Can two players carry an entire offense?” he writes. “Geekie and Pastrnak are the only players to score more than six goals through 21 games this season. It's never a good sign when a team's offense can be better defined as a ‘duo.’”
That’s fair – to an extent. Yes, the Bruins’ offense clearly runs through David Pastrnak and Morgan Geekie, and you’d really like to have another horse or two up front. But the Bruins actually have gotten a solid amount of depth scoring so far this season, helping them rank 10th in the NHL in goals per game. It is fair to expect some regression (they’re 19th in expected goals), but we also shouldn’t ignore what has actually happened so far.
If anything is going to tank the Bruins’ playoff chances in the immediate future, it could be injuries. We’re still waiting for any kind of timeline on top defenseman Charlie McAvoy after he took a slap shot to the mouth on Saturday. He won't play on this four-game road trip, at least. Viktor Arvidsson and Casey Mittelstadt, both of whom had started to pick up their play on the second line, are considered week-to-week with lower-body injuries. Elias Lindholm, who has been out since Oct. 30 with a lower-body injury, at least traveled with the team on this road trip and has been upgraded to day-to-day.