Jude Magnotti ‘26
EE Sports Columnist
Okay, I’ll take it back. THIS is the biggest collapse I have ever seen. Now for those of you who have absolutely no clue what I am talking about hold on, I will get to that.
First we must understand what got us to this point. The Boston Bruins just had the greatest regular season in NHL history. They went 65-12-5 claiming the most wins in NHL history by far. It was a magical season jam-packed with game winning goals, unrelenting blowouts, and some absolutely phenomenal play by David Pastrnak.
Boston fans were ecstatic all season and every regular season game in the garden felt like game 7 of the Stanley Cup. Now, the Bruins have not won a Stanley Cup since 2011. Relatively speaking, that’s really not that long ago, but for the city of Boston, that’s a millennia. Boston has always been known for their sports and going ten years or more without a championship was considered to be the beginning of a curse by die-hard Boston fans (you have the Red Sox to thank for that).
However, with this record breaking season, Boston fans had immense optimism going into the playoffs. It seemed like a championship would be a formality for the best team ever, but fans were still skeptical about one thing: The Presidents Trophy curse. The Presidents trophy is one of the most prestigious honors that can be given to a team. It is awarded to the team with the best record in the regular season, but trust me this is one award you do not want to get.
In the past 23 years, the team with the Presidents Trophy has only won the stanley cup twice. Yes, you heard that right, only twice. In addition, 11 of these have been first round exits as well. However, the Bruins had just had the greatest regular season ever, they were destined to win…right?
To the despair of all Bruins fans, this is not what happened. Boston was matched up against the Florida Panthers, a team that had just won the Presidents Trophy themselves a year ago. Fans knew this would still be a tough series for the Bruins but there was no doubt in the minds of fans that the Bruins would advance. For a time, it looked like they were going to be right.
Boston started off the series leading 3-1 and had home court advantage on their side. Now a 3-1 comeback in Hockey is not nearly as rare as it is in basketball, but it is still uncommon. You think it would take a miracle to come back down 3-1 to the best team in NHL history. Well, a miracle is what Florida needed, and a miracle was what they got.
The Panthers pulled a LeBron James 2.0 and stormed back taking games 5 and 6 to force a deciding game 7 at TD Garden. The first period and a half was all Florida. They scored two back-to-back goals and were up 2-0 against Boston. However, the Bruins would not simply go down without a fight. They answered with a goal midway through the second period and one right before the period ended.
Now the game was tied and tensions were at an all-time high. Then, in the blink of an eye, the Bruins scored a goal midway through the third period going up 3-2. TD Garden was absolutely ecstatic and they truly believed that this was the dagger that would punch their ticket to the second round. All they had to do was not to allow a goal for 6 minutes and they would move on. How hard could that be?
Well apparently for Boston it was impossible because with 59 seconds left and Florida’s net completely empty the Bruins allowed a game tying goal sending them to overtime. By then Boston was both physically and mentally exhausted. The series had gone on for way longer than they thought and it wasn’t long till they were sent home. Only 5 minutes in, the Panthers scored and that was it.
The greatest team in NHL history was going home in the first round. Now there are several factors that led to this epic collapse by the Bruins. One of them was the surprising absence of their best player David Pastrnak in the last 3 games. Pastrnak was only able to score one goal during that time and your superstars have to give more production then that if you are going to win a tight series.
Number 2 was the Bruins inability to convert goals off of power plays. Boston had 6 more power plays this series than the Panthers yet only one of them turned into a goal.
Number 3 was just the flat out terrible goaltending by the Bruins. Throughout the regular season, Boston used a goalie combination of Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman. Ullmark is well on his way to winning the Vezina trophy for best goalie and Swayman was a very effective back-up who performed well when Ullmark was resting or hurt.
In the playoffs, this was a completely different story. Ullmark went from averaging under 2 goals a game in the regular season to 4 in the playoffs. His terrible outings in games 5 and 6 were enough to get him benched in game 7 in favor of Swayman. While Swayman was forced into an extremely tough situation he still allowed all 4 goals and ultimately lost the Bruins the game.
However, by far the most important factor that led to the Bruins collapse was their carelessness with the puck. Boston finished with a whopping 88 giveaways in all 7 games. The panthers said ‘Thank you” after each one and were consistently able to score goals off of these unforced errors.
The Bruins loss has just added to the absolute dumpster fire that is Boston sports this week. The Patriots missed out on their preferred pick in the draft. The Celtics dropped game 1 to an Embiid-less Sixers, and now the Bruins just choked harder than the Atlanta Falcons whenever they were up by more than 20 points.
Maybe it was the pressure of being the best team in history, maybe it was the pressure of possibly being eliminated in the first round. Either way only one thing is certain and it’s that the 2022-2023 Boston Bruins will never be mentioned in the same breath as the greatest teams in NHL history ever again.