The Senators and Bruins will face off in their first ever playoff match-up on Wednesday night at Canadian Tire Centre. While the Senators have home ice advantage, the Bruins seem to be the consensus favorites and are a heavy favorite if you pay attention to the Vegas betting odds (which aren't necessarily an indication of who is going to win but the odds that will garner a balanced wagering set, but that is another discussion entirely).
Starting off, here are the possible projected lineups, sort of going partially by instinct and partially by what has been iced as of late. Injuries and returning players (from rest, injury and suspension) will play a factor (like who will play with Chara for example) BOSTON
Marchand - Bergeron - Backes Vatrano - Krejci - Pastrnak Beleskey - Spooner - Stafford Schaller? - Moore - Nash
Chara - Morrow/McEvoy? Liles - McQuiad C. Miller - K. Miller
Rask/Khudobin
OTTAWA
Hoffman - Pageau - Stone Smith - Turris - Ryan Stalberg - Brassard - Burrows MacArthur/Dzingel - Kelly - Pyatt
Claesson - Karlsson Phaneuf - Ceci Borowiecki/Harpur - Wideman
Anderson/Condon
Here is a breakdown of the series, piece by piece.
OFFENSE Boston has been a darling of the advanced stats crowd all season, and if they had their way the Bruins would have been crowned the Stanley Cup Champs a while ago. There is a case for that, as they are second in the league in both shots for and shots against.
In terms of goals per game, they rank 13th in the NHL at 232 (2.83G/GP) while the Senators are 22nd with 206 goals for (2.51/GP) and 17th in the league at 30 shots for/game.
Boston had two 30 goal scorers in Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak, with two more topping the 20 goal plateau with David Krejci and Patrice Bergeron. No Senator reached 30, and three topped 20 - Kyle Turris, Mike Hoffman and Mark Stone.
Each team had nine players with 10 or more goals, and the Bruins had five 40+ point players (Marchand, Bergeron, Krejci, Pastrnak and the injured Torey Krug) and the Senators had 4 (Erik Karlsson, Turris, Hoffman, Stone).
Ottawa got more production from their blue line, with 161 points as opposed to 138 from Boston, who will be missing at least 51 of those points with Krug on the sidelines.
Ottawa has a number of players in prolonged slumps - Mark Stone, Ryan Dzingel, Bobby Ryan for example - and they need to get those players going. Ottawa got an emotional lift with the unexpected return of Clarke MacArthur to the lineup, and he has gotten better with each game to the point that he could be in the opening night lineup, or if not he would be the first go-to guy to get some energy as the series goes on.
EDGE: BOSTON
DEFENSE & GOALTENDING
These two teams ended up very close defensively, but got there in different way. Boston was good at denying shots on goal, giving up just 26.8 shots against/game (2nd in the league) and allowing 209 goals (2.55/GP, 9th in the NHL). Ottawa, on the other hand, improved drastically from the previous season in terms of allowing shots (30.0/GP, 17th in the NHL) and they allowed just 1 more goal than the Bruins, (210 GA, 2.56/GP, 10th in the NHL.
Both teams have key injuries on their blue line, with the aforementioned Krug likely out for this series and Brendan Carlo also expected to be out at least for the start. They still have Zdeno Chara, who despite not being the Norris-calibre defenseman he once was, is still a huge presence on the blue line, and they signed highly touted prospect and USA World Junior stantout Charlie McAvoy who could get thrown right into the fire due to the injuries Boston has sustained.
Ottawa will have Erik Karlsson back for game 1, which is a huge sigh of relief for Senators fans, but will likely be without Marc Methot for a while longer. If you saw the highlights of him skating on the weekend, it wasn't a very promising sign that he didn't use his bad hand for anything at all, be it stickhandling or shooting. Fortunately, Freddie Claesson and Ben Harpur stepped up in the last couple of weeks and provide some depth for Guy Boucher to work with in Methot's absence.
The two starting goalies put up pretty similar numbers this season, although Tuukka Rask carried a much heavier workload. Rask posted a 2.23GAA, .915 SP and 8 shutouts in 65 games.
Craig Anderson had some much publicized and understandable lengthy absences and should be the fresher of the two goalies, with just 40 games under his belt, posting a 2.28 GAA and .926 SP with five shutouts.
I would say Ottawa has the slight advantage in goal, partially due to the fact that their backup is Mike Condon, who is a much better option if it is required than Anton Khudobin has turned out to be this season for the Bruins.
But, if Boston decides to focus on shooting from behind the net and trying wraparounds, that seems to be a vulnerable area in Anderson's game and has been for some time and they can possibly exploit that. Once or twice is a fluke, but he gets beat with more bad angle shots than any goalie I can ever remember seeing.
EDGE: SENATORS because of Karlsson, but could swing either way with one netminder or the other being in the zone
SPECIAL TEAMS
If Ottawa is going to have a downfall, this could be it. While power plays are traditionally fewer and farther between in the playoffs, the disparity between Ottawa and Boston's special teams play is significant.
Boston had the NHL's seventh best power play at 21.7%, were 9th at home and 6th on the road. Ottawa's power play started out not bad, but fell to just 17% and was 23rd in the league (27th at home and 14th on the road).
The disparity is even greater in terms of penalty kill, with Boston being the top unit in the league at 85.7% (1st at home, 8th on the road), while Ottawa stumbled in to a 22nd place ranking (4th at home, 28th on the road).
When you add up PP and PK percentages, anything over 100 is considered "good". Boston's total of 107.4 is great, while Ottawa's 96.7 leaves a lot to be desired. EDGE: Boston
INTANGIBLES
The Bruins are 18-8-1 since they made their coaching change, replacing Claude Julien with Bruce Cassidy. It seems to have breathed some new life into the team.
The core of the Bruins (Krejci, Marchand, Bergeron, Chara, Rask) have all been around since the Bruins won the Stanley Cup in 2010-11 and then made a trip to the finals two years later. This group is 8-3 in playoff series' over the past 6 years, but are making their return to the post-season after missing for the last 2 seasons. Ottawa has played just 4 series in the last 6 seasons, winning just one of them.
Ottawa has shown a tendency to raise their game against the better teams in the league, and I wanted to see if the Bruins were the same. They have not been, at least this season and the numbers are actually quite shocking. Ottawa's record against the other 15 playoff teams this season is 22-14-5, while Boston's record against the playoff-bound teams is a wilting 11-26-3. Boston beat up on the lesser lights of the Atlantic Division (5-0 vs FLA, 4-1 vs TB, 4-0 vs BUF, 3-0-1 vs DET), making a lot of hay by beating the teams they should beat.
EDGE: EVEN
HEAD TO HEAD
Ottawa won all 4 meetings with the Bruins, outscoring them 11-6 in the process. Boston managed just a single point, getting a shootout loss in the final meeting of the regular season.
Special teams were a big factor, with five of Boston's six goals in their head to head match-ups coming on the man advantage. That means in 4 games, Boston managed just 1 even strength goal.
EDGE: Ottawa
PREDICTION
This could really go either way. While the head to head favors Ottawa, as does their ability to step up to the level of their competition, it could come down to which goalie has his "A" game going at the right time.
While Ottawa would love a 5-on-5 scenario as much as possible, if Boston can turn it into a special teams battle, the edge would swing their way because both of Ottawa's odd-man units are momentum killers for them at the moment. That means Ottawa has to turn the other cheek when it comes to the antics of guys like Marchand and they have to avoid the extra-curricular post-whistle activities lest the officials decide to single out a player form either side. The way their power play has been going, even a man advantage can suck the life out of the team and the fans with frustration.
If Karlsson is 100%, he is the biggest difference-maker on the ice, and that combined with home ice advantage, head to head results and the respective teams' records against good teams makes me have to look like a homer and predict
SENATORS in 7.
The last game of the regular season between the two teams was competitive but very sportsmanlike (Hoffman and Krejci apologies in particular). I wouldn't expect that to last very long and this will be a tough, hard fought series that will increase the rivalry for two teams that have been in the same division for 25 years but have never met in the post-season.