The 2022-23 Boston Bruins will be remembered as one of hockey’s all-time worst disappointments

Mike McKenna
Mike McKenna(MikeMcKenna56)
The 2022-23 Boston Bruins will be remembered as one of hockey’s all-time worst disappointments
Credit: © Bob DeChiara-USA TODAY Sports

Let’s get something straight: the 2022-23 Boston Bruins won’t be remembered as the best team in the history of the NHL. They’ll be remembered as the greatest disappointment in decades. Maybe ever.

What’s the level of discontent in Boston? Just listen to the call from Bruins play-by-play broadcaster Jack Edwards.

Sheesh, Jack. 36 people died in the Hindenburg disaster. Hockey is just a sport. But no matter how whacky or macabre his call was, I understood what he was saying. The 2022-23 Boston Bruins – a purported team of destiny – went down in flames.

Boston fans are reeling. The team was so utterly dominant during the regular season that losing in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs was unthinkable. It didn’t even matter who the opponent was. The Bruins were supposed to be unbeatable.

Just one problem. Boston wasn’t invincible.

A truly great team would have steamrolled through their first round opponent. Something Boston proved incapable of Sunday night when the No. 8 seed Florida Panthers bounced the Bruins from the postseason in Game 7 of the opening round of action..

The brutal truth of the matter is that Boston blew it. There’s just no way around it. After a 135-point regular season – the highest in NHL history – the Bruins couldn’t get past a Florida team that squeaked into the postseason with 43 fewer points (92) during the regular season. It was the biggest statistical upset in NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs history.

Boston didn’t get goalie’d by Panthers netminders Alex Lyon and Sergei Bobrovsky. Nor did the Bruins fail to score: they buried the puck 24 times in seven games. And never tallied fewer than three in a single matchup.

Boston had Florida on the ropes for almost the entirety of the series. The Bruins won the first matchup. Then proceeded to go up 3-1 in games over the Panthers. But what the Bruins failed to do was defend with any consistency or purpose. They were loose with the puck. And when it mattered most, the Bruins choked. 

Boston was leading Game 6 by a score of 5-4 with 10 minutes left to play. Florida won 7-5. 

Boston was leading Game 7 by a score of 3-2 with one minute left to play in regulation time. Florida won 4-3 in overtime. 

At the most critical juncture of a magical season, the Bruins lacked the tenacity, execution, and goaltending to make it past the first round of the playoffs.

It didn’t take a postmortem to know why the Bruins failed, because the team’s faults were obvious in real time. And the tweet below from fellow NHL analyst Mike Kelly sums it up.

Sam Reinhart’s goal came just 1:14 into the second period of Game 7, and it highlighted the Bruins’ biggest weakness: puck management. Turnovers crushed Boston.

Now, part of that is a credit to Florida. The Panthers did a great job of taking away the walls and limiting defensive zone exit routes for the Bruins. Florida head coach Paul Maurice and his staff deserve a huge amount of credit. The Panthers found a way to make Boston uncomfortable and they capitalized on it.

Maybe we should have all seen this coming. The Panthers were the only team in the NHL to split their 2022-23 season series with the Bruins. Each team won twice. And Florida has played with a discernible edge since Keith Tkachuk – father of Panthers right winger Matthew Tkachuk, and veteran of over 1,200 NHL games – called the team soft in a late-March radio interview with Toronto 1050 that went viral.

But no doubt Bruins bench boss Jim Montgomery addressed his team’s problems as the first round played out. A seven-game series is a completely immersive experience. No stone is left unturned when it comes to system play and the opposition’s tendencies.

So if you ask me, this comes down to the Bruins players. Boston had the road map to success. And the Bruins front office did everything possible at the trade deadline to bolster an already deep lineup. 

Tyler Bertuzzi  – acquired from the Detroit Red Wings – led Boston in playoff scoring. And Dmitry Orlov, who came over from the Washington Capitals, led all Bruins defenders with eight points in seven games. Those guys made a difference.

But shockingly, it was the core of the Bruins that wasn’t up to the task. Especially on the defensive side of the puck. Brad Marchand, despite posting 10 points in the series, was minus-6. And Patrice Bergeron, although playing through a herniated disc in his back, was minus-6 in the three games he played. That’s not typical of the five-time Selke Trophy winner.

Know who wasn’t minus in the series? Just about the entire Panthers roster. Tkachuk had 11 points and finished plus-5. Defenseman Gustav Forsling was plus-7. At even strength, the Panthers were the better team.

Not having a healthy Bergeron mattered for Boston. And David Krejci also missed three games. The Bruins weren’t as strong as Florida at the center ice position – something that wasn’t expected going in. But with all the Bruins’ firepower and structure, it shouldn’t have mattered. 

The bottom line is when the intensity ratcheted up, Boston fell flat. They lost three games on home ice. There were turnovers galore. The Bruins made countless bad decisions with the puck. And goaltenders Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman both allowed untimely goals against. Neither needed to steal games. Or the entire series. They just had to shut the door. And neither was able to.

All the classic pitfalls of a team that waltzed through the regular season were on display. The Bruins hit their first stretch of real adversity at absolutely the wrong time of the year. And rather than overcoming the challenges presented, Boston died on the vine.

I’m 40 years old. I can remember some big upsets in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The Columbus Blue Jackets knocking off the league-leading Tampa Bay Lightning in 2019 being one of them. But nothing compares to the 2022-23 Bruins losing to the Panthers. Wow.

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