As the Bruins enjoy two days off before returning to practice on Wednesday, they got to watch their two potential second-round opponents -- the Penguins and Islanders -- battle into double overtime Monday night before Pittsburgh goalie Tristan Jarry one-upped Ilya Samsonov and committed a brutal turnover that handed Josh Bailey the winning goal and the Islanders a 3-2 series lead.
The Islanders will have a chance to close out the series on home ice Wednesday night. If they don't, Game 7 will be Friday night in Pittsburgh.
From a Bruins perspective, the obvious question is whether they should prefer to face one of the Penguins or Islanders over the other. It's a question we debated as part of the latest episode of The Skate Podcast, which you can listen to here:
The argument for preferring the Islanders is two-fold. The first part is that the Bruins would have home ice against them, but not the Penguins. And with the Bruins increasing to "near full capacity" beginning Saturday and the Islanders and Penguins both recently increasing to 50% (and possibly more next round), home ice should actually matter now.
The second is that outside of goaltending, the Islanders are not as good of a team as the Penguins. Now, goaltending is obviously a huge factor that cannot be ignored (more on that next). But they are not nearly as deep offensively, and they did not play nearly as well post-trade deadline.
The Penguins had the third-best record in the NHL post-trade deadline and ranked fourth offensively with 3.57 goals per game, with deadline acquisition Jeff Carter scoring nine goals in 14 regular-season games and now three more in five playoff games. With Evgeni Malkin now back and Sidney Crosby still doing his thing, Carter gives Pittsburgh arguably the best 1-2-3 center punch in the NHL.
The Islanders, meanwhile, went just 5-6-3 over the final month of the regular season and ranked 29th in offense with 2.21 goals per game. Their deadline acquisitions, Kyle Palmieri and Travis Zajac, have not come close to replacing what they lost when Anders Lee went down with a season-ending injury.
In this series, the Penguins have controlled much of the play, recording 56.3% of shot attempts, 54.2% of shots on goal and 56.2% of scoring chances. On Monday night, they outshot the Islanders 50-28.
The argument for preferring the Penguins is really straightforward, and you probably already know it by now: Goaltending. Tristan Jarry has been bad in this series and is the single biggest reason Pittsburgh is now facing elimination in a series it should probably be leading.
He has given up three or more goals in four of the five games, several of those goals have been on stoppable shots, and his mistake on the winning goal Monday night was just inexcusable, even moreso than the one Samsonov committed on Craig Smith's winner in Bruins-Capitals Game 3. Samsonov's was a miscommunication with a defenseman; Jarry's was having two open passing options, not taking either of them, panicking, passing right to the opponent instead, then not recovering in time to save the shot.
Usual backup Casey DeSmith is dealing with a lower-body injury and hasn't been available this series. Like Jarry, he was inconsistent in the regular season as well. The Penguins clearly haven't trusted third-string goalie Max Lagace enough to play him over Jarry, at least not yet.
If the Capitals' shaky goaltending was appealing to face, the Penguins' is worth salivating over. Oddly enough, the Islanders are the team that has actually made a goaltending switch in this series, replacing Semyon Varlamov with rookie Ilya Sorokin. But both of those goalies are actually good, and Sorokin has really been great since taking over.
So, that's the debate. Would you rather have home-ice advantage and face the less complete team (the Islanders), but have to deal with better goaltending? Or would you rather face the Penguins' poor goaltending, even though they're a deeper team and you wouldn't have home ice?
The Bruins went 5-3-0 against the Penguins this season and just 3-3-2 against the Islanders, but it has to be noted that the Bruins were actually 3-0-0 against the Islanders after the trade deadline, outscoring them 10-3 in those final three meetings.
Either way, the reality is that the Bruins should and will be favored over either. Boston is both a deep, well-rounded team and one that has very good goaltending, something neither the Penguins nor Islanders can say.
