BOSTON -- Hockey can be a funny game.
Home ice seemed more like a disadvantage than an advantage for the Boston Bruins and Toronto Maple Leafs throughout their opening series of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The home team won just twice through the first six games, but the Black and Gold made sure that trend would be bucked when it mattered most in Tuesday night’s deciding Game 7 at TD Garden.
Though it wasn’t easy at any point against a team with plenty of high-end talent of its own, the Bruins got the job done in what turned out to be the most lopsided game of the series. This 5-1 win, though, was accomplished in rather unexpected fashion.
Earlier in the series, some of the B’s top guns were held in check. Jake DeBrusk, David Krejci and David Pastrnak combined for just one point ― a Pastrnak assist ― through the first two games. Outside of Patrice Bergeron, the only Bruin who had goals in two of the first three contests was Weymouth, Mass., native Charlie Coyle.
But it didn’t matter. The Bruins played two of their most complete games when facing elimination, becoming the first team in National Hockey League history to win its opening series in seven games against the same opponent in consecutive seasons.
“Relentless. Resilient. Whatever you want to call it,” Coyle said. “We were down almost every part of that series and you battle back each game, tie it, pull things over and we pull it out when need be. It was a lot of fun. There’s never any panic in our game and that starts with our leadership and it’s huge to have those guys lead the way.”
The team’s key players and offensive leaders did eventually answer that call, helping Boston out of three separate one-game deficits in the series. It was DeBrusk’s goal that set up the deciding seventh game and Brad Marchand who led the B’s with four goals in the series, but Tuesday night was all about Coyle and his fellow depth players.
Three of Boston’s five Game 7 goal scorers ― Coyle, Joakim Nordstrom, and Marcus Johansson ― were not part of last season’s team that bested the Leafs before losing its second-round series to Tampa Bay in disappointing five-game fashion. Fourth-line center Sean Kuraly scored a key insurance goal 2:40 into the third after being scratched for the first four games of the series, and Bergeron added the final empty-net tally.
Coyle has been the perfect acquisition for the Bruins, ultimately finding a good fit in the series on the third line with Johansson and rookie Karson Kuhlman. The former came to Boston from New Jersey less than a week after Coyle and former Harvard star Ryan Donato (Scituate, Mass.) swapped homes in late February. And he’s fit with whoever he’s played with throughout his brief Boston tenure so far, even sliding over to the wing at times due to injuries.
Coyle has watched the B’s from afar in Minnesota for years and knows that this way the team is built has long been a key to success. Even with a top-six forward group that is considered among the game’s best, it’s not always about the stars. He’s the perfect example. It never has been.
“That’s why this is such a good team,” Coyle said. “More times than not they are scoring, don’t get me wrong, but those guys do little details night in and night out that don’t go on the scoresheet. They’re not hockey players that will miss, so that’s what makes a team. That’s why this team has always been up there and so good and won top playoff battles whether they’re down in the series.”
Goaltender Tuukka Rask was there all throughout but especially when the Leafs made a second-period surge and pulled within 2-1, making key stops on Leafs stars Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner. Rask finished the series with a .928 save percentage and was considered to be most valuable to the team by head coach Bruce Cassidy.
In the end, the B’s skaters ultimately proved head coach Bruce Cassidy right in sticking with what he felt was the lineup that could best combat Toronto’s speed and skill, one that was found during the first elimination game Sunday in Toronto. Even without alternate captain David Backes and first-year Bruin but league veteran Chris Wagner (Walpole, Mass.) on the ice for the final two games, Boston found the right mix in a series during which the B’s and the aforementioned Leafs stars, for all intents and purposes, canceled each other out.
“That’s why they’re in the lineup. I think we’ve got a lot of good choices,” Cassidy said of the team’s reliable depth. “It’s very difficult to tell a couple of the guys who didn’t play they weren’t going to; they played a part of the series. We talked at the start of the series that we felt we needed a certain type of lineup to beat Toronto, and we finally found it late in the series. I thought Game 6 and 7 we skated well.”
The Bruins are still missing bodies like defensemen Connor Clifton and Kevan Miller due to injury, but the team’s overall health improved throughout the opening series with the likes of Kuraly and John Moore coming back.
That’s good news in itself entering the second-round series with Columbus that begins Thursday night, though it was the depth players like Coyle that came through in the clutch that helped the B’s rake the Leafs away again.
