Defense, goaltending fuelling another strong start for Boston Bruins
After a record-breaking 2022–23 season (don’t ask what happened in the playoffs), the Boston Bruins lost long-time franchise pillars Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci to retirement and had very little flexibility to replace them.
The result: Boston entered the 2023–24 campaign with all kinds of question marks, particularly at the center position. With the likes of Pavel Zacha, Charlie Coyle, and 19-year-old Matt Poitras all playing top-nine minutes down the middle to begin the year, you’d be forgiven if you expected the Bruins to get off to a rocky start.
Nope. The Bruins have picked up right where they left off at the end of last regular season, winning each of their first three games this year in convincing fashion. Sure, they have yet to play a team that made the playoffs last year — that’ll change when they take on the L.A. Kings on Saturday — but they’ve still banked six out of six points. That’s a big deal at this point of the season.
On Friday’s edition of Daily Faceoff Live, Tyler Yaremchuk and Frank Seravalli took a closer look at what’s been powering the Bruins early on this year.
Tyler Yaremchuk: There were question marks heading into this year. No Krejci, no Bergeron, what was this team gonna look like? They maybe lose some part of their identity, and I think maybe a part of that was overblown because they’ve still got Marchand, they’ve still got Pastrnak rocking his swaggy sunglasses in the outdoor game there. But they have not missed a beat. I talked about Vegas and their offense — I want to talk about Boston and how I think they’re being driven by their goaltending, Frank. That duo has just been unreal so far this season with Ullmark and Swayman.
Frank Seravalli: One of only three undefeated teams remaining in the NHL, and as good as the goaltending is, and it has been for Ullmark coming off of that Vezina year, I think what it really does is sell short how elite Boston’s defense corps is. And they’re a big reason why that goaltending is able to stand up as well as it does. You look at McAvoy and Lindholm and Carlo, and now you’re even able to add someone in like Kevin Shattenkirk on the back end as a power-play specialist that can contribute on PP2, like, you’ve got a lot of different options that you can throw at teams, and they just move incredibly well. Their attention-to-detail defending is what stands out to me. People were expecting some kind of drop-off from the Bruins, we know it’s not going to be a historic regular season for Boston as they pick up the pieces after Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci retired, but there’s no reason whatsoever that this team with this defense corps, and the goalies that they have backing them up, can’t be an 100-plus-point team this year in the Atlantic.
Watch the full episode here …