Bet On NHL Hockey Boston Bruins Season Preview
Has there been a luckier sports city on Earth than Boston, Massachusetts over the last decade? World Series titles for the Red Sox in 2004 and 2007. Super Bowls for the Patriots in 2001, 2003 and 2004. An NBA Championship for Boston in 2008. The Bruins were supposed to be the tagalong kid brother but they joined the party with a Stanley Cup victory in 2011.
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Were the Bruins a one-hit wonder or is this the start of a dynasty to rival other great Boston teams?
BOSTON BRUINS
Stanley Cup odds: +1000
The most common question to ask of a Cup champ the following fall is: what has changed about this team?
In Boston’s case, not much. Mark Recchi retired and Tomas Kaberle left in free agency (good riddance). But Benoit Pouliot is a more than adequate replacement for the future Hall-of-Famer Recchi and Joe Corvo’s combination of offensive vision and defensive ineptitude on the blueline is quite Kaberle-like, though Corvo has a harder shot.
The rest of Boston’s championship squad is very much intact. The man who backstopped them to the Cup, Tim Thomas, returns after having perhaps the greatest season by a goaltender in the modern era. He posted a 2.00 goals against average, set a single-season record with a .938 save percentage, was an All-Star, won the Stanley Cup, won the Vezina Trophy and took the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP. He did everything a goalie can do in one season.
Thomas is 37 years old and goalies with frantic, athletic styles don’t age well. But Boston doesn’t care if Thomas ‘ability falls off a cliff. Tuukka Rask is the best backup in the league. He was one of the best <em>starters</em> in the league in between Thomas’ two Vezina-Trophy seasons. Goaltending won’t be a problem for Boston no matter what. [ad-4437448]
Nor will defense. Though they’re better built for the playoffs, when referees ease up on the infractions, the Bruins’ defenders are big, mean, shutdown types. There’s no one better than captain Zdeno Chara; Dennis Seidenberg may be hockey’s most underrated defenseman. Those two have great support from bruisers like Adam McQuaid, Andrew Ference and Johnny Boychuk.
Boston doesn’t have the league’s flashiest offense but guys like Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci make a deep impact because they’re such good defensive assets on top of their scoring ability. Milan Lucic and Nathan Horton are animals on the forecheck.
To me, the biggest reason to get excited about Boston in 2011-12 is Tyler Seguin. The 2010 second overall pick played a minor role for most of last season as a teenager but flashed brilliance in the playoffs with six points over a two-game stretch in the Eastern Conference final against Tampa.
With his speed, hands and release, Seguin has potential to get so good, so fast that he could lead this team in scoring as soon as this season.
Looking up and down Boston’s roster, it’s virtually impossible to view them as anything less than a top-five team in the NHL again this season. Little has changed from their championship group, which remains young aside from Thomas. If a few things don’t break Boston’s way this season, the expected improvement from Seguin should offset whatever goes wrong. The Bruins remain the class of the Northeast.
Prediction: 1st, Northeast Division
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