NHL commissioner Gary Bettman confirmed Tuesday that the 2019-20 regular season is officially over and when the league returns to the ice, they will jump right into the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

The Bruins finish the campaign 44-14-12 and with a league-best 100 points, earning their first President’s Trophy since the 2013-14 season.

In the last 20 years only the 2000-01 Colorado Avalanche, 2001-02 and 2007-08 Detroit Red Wings and 2012-13 Chicago Blackhawks have won the Stanley Cup as Presidents' Trophy winners.

With the regular season coming to an end, David Pastrnak and Alex Ovechkin have also been named co-winners of the Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy as the league’s leading goal scorer(s) with 48.

Although the league has yet to determine where stats from the qualification round will fall, Bettman made it clear that for purposes of “record keeping and NHL awards, the 2019-20 regular season has been deemed to be completed.”

Pastrnak is not the only Bruin to take home hardware—maybe?—this season as Tuukka Rask and Jaroslav Halak win the Jennings Trophy, awarded annually to the goaltenders who allowed the fewest goals in the regular season. Rask and Halak combined to allow 167 goals in 70 games.

Rask will likely be in the discussion for the Vezina trophy, finishing the season with a league best 2.12 goals-against average and a second-best .929 save percentage among qualifying goalies.

The Bruins will return to action with a three-team round robin style tournament against the Washington Capitals, Tampa Bay Lightning and Philadelphia Flyers, all who also have a bye as the top four teams in the conference based off of percentage points.

One of the biggest impacts the cancelation of the remainder of the regular season has on the Bruins will be figuring out where Ondrej Kase and Nick Ritchie fit in.

Kase appeared in six games for the Bruins post trade, picking up just one point in the process. Ritchie managed one more game than Kase, scoring once and adding one assist.

Ideally Kase would be a fit to the right of Jake DeBrusk and David Krejci, but the three didn’t get the opportunity to build much chemistry, skating in just 3:21 of five-on-five time together.

Projected lines:

Brad Marchand-Patrice Bergeron-David Pastrnak
Jake DeBrusk-David Krejci-Ondrej Kase
Nick Ritchie-Charlie Coyle-Anders Bjork
Joakim Nordstrom-Sean Kuraly-Chris Wagner

Zdeno Chara-Charlie McAvoy
Torey Krug-Brandon Carlo
Matt Grzelcyk-Jeremy Lauzon

Depth options:

Par Lindholm, Karson Kuhlman, Jack Studnicka, Trent Frederic, Cameron Hughes, Anton Blidh, Steve Kampfer, Connor Clifton, John Moore, Urho Vaakanainen.

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