“Boston” set a winning record – Sport – Kommersant

The Boston Bruins have become the new NHL record holder for the number of victories in the regular season. The win against the Philadelphia Flyers – 5:3 – was his 63rd in the current championship. Spending a phenomenal season, the Bostonians are hindered from being called the clear favorites for the Stanley Cup only by the fact that the best regular season clubs too often fail in the playoffs.

The next season of the NHL, and so rich in all sorts of statistical achievements, has replenished with one more. With a win over Philadelphia, Boston won its 63rd regular season win, which is, of course, a very significant event. It’s a league record. Bostonians beat the two co-owners of the former: the Detroit Red Wings had 62 wins in 1996 and the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2019. Detroit, however, set the record at a time when the NHL had not yet introduced a shootout after draws in regulation time and overtime. Seven of his meetings ended in peace, while Boston pulled out four wins in shootouts. But this is a trifle, which does not negate the fact that he is conducting some kind of phenomenal by the standards of the modern NHL, which is distinguished by the highest level of competition and fluctuation of the layouts of the NHL.

What makes it especially surprising is that the club, which at the finish line of the regular season will certainly beat the 46-year-old Montreal Canadiens’ record for points scored – 132 (the Bostonians now have one less with two meetings on the calendar – against already flying past the play- off “Washington Capitals” and “Montreal”), before the start of the championship did not seem capable of such feats at all.

In the ESPN rankings, the Boston Bruins were only 14th overall. And the reasons to put him so low, predicting, in fact, a difficult struggle for getting into the cup stage, seemed quite weighty.

This is both a modest previous season with 107 points in the regular season and a knockout in the very first round of the playoffs from the Carolina Hurricanes, and a solid, well over 30, age of the pivotal players – Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, David Krejci, who for a whole year before returning to the NHL, he played in his native Czech Republic, and the appearance of a new coach – Jim Montgomery, a specialist with a rather complicated biography: in it, for example, there was a place for a course of treatment for alcoholism.

But everything just worked out just perfect. Montgomery quickly adapted to the team. Veterans, including Krejci, who returned, retained their class and reliability. Fresh – last year and made already at the beginning of this year – acquisitions in the person of Pavel Zaha, Hampus Lindholm, Dmitry Orlov, Tyler Bertucia, Garnet Hathaway added depth to the squad and strength of the game. Offensive superstar David Pastrnak caught a crazy sniping drive, and after a hat-trick against Philadelphia, he already has 60 goals in his credit – more, 64, only Connor McDavid from the Edmonton Oilers. And Linus Ulmark will certainly win the award of the best goalkeeper in the league, leading in both the percentage of shots saved and the average number of goals conceded per match: there are only 1.89 of them, which is also a great indicator.

Now the experts of the same ESPN, which in the fall of 2022, as it turned out, in vain underestimated Boston, of course, are forced to position the club that won the regular season by a decent margin (the closest pursuer in the summary table, Carolina, is already 22 points behind), as the top contender for the Stanley Cup. Any other point of view would be strange. However, in the case of Boston, a caveat is needed to explain why it is positioned as a favorite with great caution.

The fact is that in the NHL, success in the regular season is somehow badly combined with success in the Stanley Cup. Quite the contrary: in practice, such success promises failure in the playoffs.

The last regular-season winner to go on to win the Stanley Cup was the Chicago Blackhawks, a decade ago. Since then, regular champions have been eliminated, usually in the early stages.

Two already former champions in victories fit perfectly into the trend. Detroit in the spring of 1996 retired in the semi-finals of the play-offs, losing to the Colorado Avalanche. And Tampa in 2019 was cut off already in the opening round, losing a clean sheet in four matches to the Columbus Blue Jackets, leaked into the Stanley Cup.

Alexey Dospekhov