The NHL and NHL Players’ Association announced on Sunday that they have officially reached an agreement for the 2020-21 season, which will be 56 games starting on Jan. 13 and ending on May 8.
The regular season and the first two rounds of the playoffs will feature exclusively divisional play, with the league realigning for one season only into four new divisions based on geography, including a seven-team all-Canadian North Division that will allow the league to not have to worry about border crossings between Canada and the United States.
The Bruins land in the East Division, which also features the Buffalo Sabres, New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders, New York Rangers, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals. Boston will play each of those other seven teams eight times in the regular season.
The top four teams in the division will qualify for the playoffs and face each other in the first two rounds (with one vs. four and two vs. three in the first round). Whichever team makes it out of that will advance to the final four along with the other three divisional playoff winners.
Let’s take a look at some pros and cons of this new format and new division as it relates to the Bruins.
Pros
No Lightning
After losing to the Lightning in five games in two of the last three postseasons, it was clear what the Bruins’ biggest obstacle was if they were going to get to another Stanley Cup Final. Now, that obstacle is gone -- at least until the final four if the Bruins get that far. With this one-year realignment, the defending Stanley Cup champion Lightning ended up in the Central Division. Under the regular division alignment, Tampa Bay would’ve been the clear favorite to win the Bruins’ division this season, potentially setting up the Maple Leafs-Lightning gauntlet for the Bruins in the first two rounds once again. The Bruins’ new East Division certainly won’t be easy by any means -- in fact, it’s probably the toughest of the four new divisions -- but there’s also no prohibitive favorite like the Lightning, and the Bruins should be able to compete with the likes of the Flyers, Penguins and Capitals for first.
Some fun rivalries get renewed
The NHL’s last realignment in 2013-14 heated up division rivalries, especially with the playoff format that made the first two rounds divisional play. The flip side is that it cooled off some non-division conference rivalries, with fewer regular-season games against those teams and playoff series against them becoming unlikely until the conference finals. From the Bruins’ perspective, some of their secondary rivalries from a decade or so ago with the Flyers, Penguins, Rangers and even Capitals all but disappeared. Now the Bruins are in a division with all of those teams and will face each of them eight times this season. So while the Bruins won’t see two of their biggest rivals (the Canadiens and Maple Leafs) this season, it should be pretty fun to see some of these other rivalries return in force, at least for one season.
Every game on Eastern time
With no games against any western or central teams this season, every Bruins game will be at a reasonable time for fans. And with only 56 games instead of the usual 82, every game will be more important than usual. Now you won’t have to worry about missing anything during some five- or six-game West Coast swing where you find yourself falling asleep in the first period.
Possibility of some interesting playoff matchups
We already touched on the fact that if the Bruins make the playoffs, they’ll be facing their new division rivals in the first two rounds. But things could get even more interesting if they make it past that. The final four will feature the four divisional playoff winners, but with no conferences this season, there will be no usual East-West split. Instead the final four matchups will be determined by the point totals of those final four, with one facing four and two vs. three. That means you could potentially see the Bruins facing someone like Colorado or Vegas or Stanley Cup Final foes St. Louis or Vancouver (probably not Chicago since the Blackhawks are going to stiiiiink) in what would normally be the conference final round. And if they get to the Stanley Cup Final, they could find what would normally be a division rival -- like Tampa Bay, Toronto or Montreal -- waiting there for them.
Cons
Habs, Leafs rivalries take a year off
While seeing the re-emergence of the other rivalries mentioned above will be cool, watching a whole season without a single game against the archrival Canadiens (barring a series late in the playoffs) will be very weird. In fact, with the exception of the 2004-05 lockout season, this will be the first time Boston and Montreal haven’t played each other in the regular season since 1923-24… the season before the Bruins became an NHL team. In recent years, the Maple Leafs -- another Original Six team -- have arguably been the Bruins’ No. 2 rival, fueled by their three seven-game playoff series since 2013. That rivalry will also now be put on hold for at least this regular season, as Toronto joins Montreal in the all-Canada division... which for some reason is officially being called the North Division even though everyone’s going to call it the Canada Division.
No Senators, Red Wings to beat up on
The Senators and Red Wings should once again be two of the worst teams in the NHL this season, so it would’ve been nice to still have divisional games against them, never mind eight apiece. Instead, Ottawa is now in the North Division while Detroit lands in the Central. The Bruins still have the Sabres in their division, but the Sabres should be at least a little better after adding Taylor Hall and Eric Staal this offseason, and they weren’t as bad as the Sens or Wings to begin with. The weakest team in the East could be the Devils (with P.K. Subban, who is now back in the Bruins’ division), but again, they’re certainly not Detroit-level bad and probably not Ottawa-level bad either. Of course, maybe none of this matters, because if you remember, Boston actually somehow lost two of its three meetings with Detroit last season.
Loaded division means playoffs won’t be a given
The Bruins should finish in the top four in the East Division and make the playoffs. Should. But it’s not impossible to imagine a world where they don’t. The Flyers looked like the hottest team in the league just before and immediately after the pause this past season and figure to be right there again. The Capitals were in first place in the Metropolitan Division at the time of the pause and return mostly the same team, although Henrik Lundqvist’s season-ending heart condition throws a sad, unfortunate wrench into their goaltending plans. The Penguins got upset by Montreal in the play-in round this summer, but if Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang are healthy, it would be foolish to write them off. The Islanders had to do some selling this offseason due to a cap crunch, but they knocked off both the Capitals and Flyers in the bubble to reach the Eastern Conference finals. The Rangers would’ve missed the normal eight-team playoffs and wound up getting swept by Carolina in the play-in round, but add No. 1 overall pick Alexis Lafrienere this season. Oh, and the Bruins will be without David Pastrnak for probably the first month of the season, Brad Marchand may need to be eased in as he’s expected to return from offseason surgery right around opening night, and they haven’t replaced Torey Krug on the blue line. Some sort of slower start for the Bruins may be expected, but with the shorter season and loaded division, they won’t be able to afford to have it last very long.