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LVorenus2020 t1_jaq3r79 wrote

Faster than the 1976-77 Canadiens?

Unreal. They'd better be passing that Cup 'round in the spring!

Otherwise, they set themselves up for a colossal collapse 'n choke, with all the sad, rage-filled months which follow.

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KyurMeTV t1_jaquhgy wrote

Do you even hockey? /s

But seriously, if history repeats, they’ll go down in round 1 or 2. Most presidents cup teams don’t make it to the Stanley Cup, it’s what love about the sport; it’s truly anyone’s game.

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L3thal_Inj3ction t1_jargvng wrote

The east is also a bloodbath this year, could definitely see them getting beat up even if they make the finals

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FriedEggScrambled t1_jb6jrtn wrote

The WC might have an easier path with less bodily damage with how the EC is playing out. Wouldn’t be surprised to see the WC take home the cup this season.

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canuck47 t1_jar2owo wrote

As a Leafs fan, I hope you're right...

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Mediocremon t1_jar3quw wrote

As a Wings fan, lol look a Leafs fan!

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canuck47 t1_jasmgfj wrote

As a Wings fan, you don't have to concern yourself about the playoffs this season 😉

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Mediocremon t1_jasn1zr wrote

Exactly. Think about all the free time I'll have to make fun of the Leafs with!

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canuck47 t1_jat2fum wrote

They can think up of some real zingers while they're playing golf 🏌️‍♀️

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Duckboy_Flaccidpus t1_jasttrv wrote

They are so frickin solid though. They'd have to really shit the bed to not make it into the finals.

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cliffx t1_jara8x9 wrote

The Bruins have 5 OTL bonus points so it's not a true comparison to earlier teams.

Without them they'd be at 96 points - which is still a great year.

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erv4 t1_jaricnv wrote

3 of those losses are SO, so they would have got one point for a tie and would be at 99 pts. They could lose in a SO or win the next game to tie or pass Montreal.

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WolfpackConsultant t1_jasm02k wrote

All 5 of their overtime losses, whether shootout or not, already give them 1 point. The 1 point for a tie was never taken away is just now the otl column in the standings

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gearmaro1 t1_jarflwj wrote

If we’re counting out OTL points, should we also count out OT wins? Since there used to be 1 point for a tie at the end if regulation.

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cliffx t1_jargyxv wrote

They used to be counted separately, but no difference really.

Both OT and regular wins are worth the same 2 points, so they all go into the win column.

So for games that go to OT there are 3 points awarded, 2 to the winner and 1 to the loser. When comparing teams from different era's the point totals no longer compare apples to apples.

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MathMaddox t1_jarhtpo wrote

They need to get rid of the loser point. If you lose you lose.

Edit: I know that is the opposite of your point, just saying.

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cliffx t1_jarkjj4 wrote

Agree, get rid of the loser point, or make a win worth 3 points.

Having some games be worth 3 points in the standings and others worth only 2 is bull.

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MathMaddox t1_jarkxnr wrote

I want to take it step further. No more shootouts, 10min 3v3 and NO points for a tie.

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garrettj100 t1_jaswkld wrote

I’ll do you one better:

One team enjoys a 1-man advantage during a 6:30 overtime period, 5-4, the whole time. Only catch is the team down a man enjoys tie odds. If the period ends in a tie they win. No more ties ever. No zero-point games where nobody wins. And with 3:00 left in the last OT period one team is going to pull the goalie and play 6-on-4.

Also: WHY IS GOMORRA?

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MathMaddox t1_jat9heu wrote

Too complicated for me. 3v3 for 10mins and a massive penalty for playing it safe (no points) should end most games.

Also none of this BS of playing for a point late in the season or teams not being able to catch up after their rival lost four straight but got 3 loser points.

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jamesa7171 t1_jazbc58 wrote

Was this inspired by Armageddon in chess? (a type of tiebreaker game in tournaments where one side is given a significant advantage, but the other side can draw to win)

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garrettj100 t1_jazix10 wrote

Yes. I follow chess as well. I suggested this to TangoTiger on twitter a few years ago, and he came up with the number of ~6:00 (I've since deleted Twitter), which is roughly the break-even 50% point for the team up a man to score a goal.

Though, Tango also suggested you do a game theory cake-cutting method of choosing the time. One team chooses the time, the other team chooses the side.

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jamesa7171 t1_jazmy8j wrote

That game theory suggestion was recently proposed officially by the Baltimore Ravens as a way to fix the NFL's sudden death OT problem there (with the opening OT kickoff abandoned, and the starting yard line for the offense being the cake-cutting choice).

I love that kind of idea on a philosophical level, but it seems like it would get analytically solved quite quickly, and after a certain point it would just represent extra formalities to go through before starting OT (compared to just legislating the time).

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garrettj100 t1_jazntbg wrote

Yeah, I could do without games that aren't the game we're watching as well. Once I heard someone suggest choosing to challenge a call was a game-within-a-game.

That's true. A sucky boring game within a game that's barely more interesting than "What number am I thinking of?"

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garrettj100 t1_jazny4f wrote

> That game theory suggestion was recently proposed officially by the Baltimore Ravens as a way to fix the NFL's sudden death OT problem there (with the opening OT kickoff abandoned, and the starting yard line for the offense being the cake-cutting choice)

There's just one problem with that proposal: The Chiefs (and possibly others) would offer up the 1-inch line.

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Matrix17 t1_jasszho wrote

History says they'll be a 1st round exit

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kraftedynasty t1_jasv9p6 wrote

Here is some history. The top 5 teams to make it to 100 points all won the Cup that year.

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Matrix17 t1_jasvsf4 wrote

Er, plenty of teams make it to 100 points every year

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NiceShotMan t1_jar5dbv wrote

What is it with Boston and always having great teams in every sport? The Bruins especially, they don’t seem to need to rebuild, they won in 2011, made the cup finals again in 2013 and 2018, and now they’re the best team in the league again. Their worst finish in those years was 2015, where they were one place out of the wildcard.

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coletron3000 t1_jari4ew wrote

A lot of it’s just luck, but it helps that Boston has the entire New England market to draw from. Big, passionate fanbases mean high revenue and a strong incentive to spend money on quality players and coaches.

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NiceShotMan t1_jarisax wrote

> it helps that Boston has the entire New England market to draw from

Doesn’t seem to help the Leafs though….

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HoNose t1_jarsoj9 wrote

Considering the performance of Canadian teams, the obvious conclusions is that Canadians aren't big hockey fans.

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chris92315 t1_jarsssw wrote

The NHL is a hard cap league. There aren't the same ways to pay players more and push the "cap hit" to further years like you can in the NFL.

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RedTical t1_jarzok2 wrote

Unless of course you have your best players on LTIR then magically heal the same day as the first game of the playoffs.

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Matrix17 t1_jast5rp wrote

Are you forgetting the cap?

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coletron3000 t1_jasu6qo wrote

I was talking about all Boston sports, not just the NHL, but even with a hard cap having a large fan base lets you spend money on facilities, coaching staffs, nutrition programs, trainers, etc. Big markets are also enticing to players, who can earn more money through endorsement deals than they would in smaller markets.

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Roberto-Del-Camino t1_jav7ipn wrote

The Bruins have had the cheapest owner in the league for years. So when the NHL adopted a salary cap, they were kind of used to playing under an artificial salary cap and you could argue had an advantage over the rest of the league because of that.

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mylarky t1_jat2r2k wrote

It's a national scene. They don't "pull" from a regional market.

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ermghoti t1_jas4hgk wrote

Cyclical. Boston also went through decades of consistent and uniform irrelevancy to comic incompetence in all four major sports. Patriots were a punchline excluding 2-3 seasons from 1960 to 2001. Bruins and Sox had indifferent management cashing in on a captive audience while putting nothing into the team for most of that time. Celtics rode the original Big Three into a retirement crater, that spilled into the tragic deaths of Len Bias and Reggie Lewis. The city was cursed for almost a full two decades

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NiceShotMan t1_jasddpt wrote

I’ll grant you the Sox, they had the curse of the bambino.

Two decades is nothing compared with anyone else though. Look at Chicago or New York: the Bulls and Hawks dropped off after their dynasties were over. Rangers haven’t won anything in like a century aside from 1994, and Knicks haven’t won since the 70s. Yankees haven’t won since 2009 despite being the richest team in baseball.

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ermghoti t1_jatcmx4 wrote

Sure, other cities have had/do have it worse. Still. Bruins had a drought from 1972 to 2011. Patriots from 1960-2001. Celtics from 1986 to 2008. The Red Sox... you know. For most of those years those teams were pretty non-competitive, the only drama was whether the Patriots would go ohfer the season. In recent years, the success of Boston teams has been disproportionately the Patriots' absurd and irreproducible success, aside from that there are six wins from 1987 to present.

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Roberto-Del-Camino t1_jav8z63 wrote

Just because they didn’t win championships during those drought years doesn’t mean they weren’t good teams. The Red Sox had winning seasons in 44 of their last 55 seasons. Their problem was being in the same division as the Yankees or running into all-time great teams when they made the World Series. But they have had a legitimate shot at the World Series almost every year for half a century.

The Bruins have made Stanley Cup runs every few years since 1970. They just couldn’t get over the hump.

The Celtics have been great since the 1950’s. Losing Len Bias and Reggie Lewis took them 10 years to get over.

And even the Patriots competed for championships once a decade from the 1960’s to 2000 before dominating the NFL for 20 years. The late 70’s Pats we’re excellent but they got sabotaged by their coach leaving without notice. The 85 Pats lost a Super Bowl to the greatest team in NFL history. The 96 Pats lost to peak Brett Favre while their coach was setting up his next job.

New England fans have been lucky. I think the real reason is because they’re passionate but will call out ownership when things aren’t good.

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ermghoti t1_javpdg0 wrote

None of that's wrong, but it lacks context. People insert emotion into patterns. When it's believed your baseball team is cursed, and your basketball team appears to have been snuffed out by the hand of an angry god, near championship runs are viewed as proof that that they can never prevail, not that they are the cusp of ultimate success. I'm speaking as a transplant from around 1990, having family in the area all my life. The sports fans were always waiting to see how the failure was going to happen.

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Roberto-Del-Camino t1_jaw7yxd wrote

If you moved here in 1990 then the Pats fans didn’t expect anything. That was possibly the nadir of the franchise. The Celtics fans were coming off the Bird years and were used to excellence. The Bruins were good. But they had lost to Gretzky’s Oilers in the Cup Finals 2 out of the previous 3 years.

But, yes, despite winning the East 3 out of the previous 5 years, Red Sox fans had the “what’ll go wrong this year” mindset. That ended in 2004 for most of us and 2007 for all but the most pessimistic fan.

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ermghoti t1_jawoqrw wrote

Yeah, that's what I was getting at. Also, so many of those near misses were seen as attributable to misfortune (ill timed injuries, unexpected deaths, Patriots being robbed in the 1976 Divisional round, etc), or grotesque incompetence (e.g. Parcells seemingly no-showing in 1996, Grady Little). The sports city viewed itself as long-suffering.

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Roberto-Del-Camino t1_jax0ikj wrote

You nailed it. All of that changed in 2004 when the Six won the World Series. Even though the Pats had just won 2 Super Bowls and we’re on their way to a third, the cloud didn’t really lift until the Red Sox reversed the curse.

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Manablitzer t1_jasfl5d wrote

As far as it happening in Boston it's mostly luck. Imagine where the Pats would be if the browns never moved and Bill stayed in CLE or even NY. But a true core of great players can really stabilize a team for a long time.

Bergeron, krejci, Chara and rask were all on the bruins as far back as '07, with marchand drafted in '09, and pastrnak in '14 (this is his 9th bruins season!). They've had serious stability from their top 5-6 players for the past 15 years.

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MathMaddox t1_jariftm wrote

Well, the Sox have been terrible recently. The Pats are middling at best right now and the Celtics have had their ups and down.

It's funny because if you listen to sports radio around here its almost always doom and gloom. For instance, according to the radio, the Bruins will be terrible soon and they shouldn't have stocked up for this year.

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rangerfan123 t1_jarlcol wrote

Celtics are 1 of 8 teams in the 4 major sports to make the playoffs 9 out of the last 10 years. Seems like mostly ups to me

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ItsGettinBreesy t1_jarn3bp wrote

One finals appearance in that time and 1 championship since the 80’s.

I’m not salty, I’m just a Lakers fan lol

Edit: lots of salty boston fans apparently

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Augen76 t1_jary7dw wrote

My buddy from Boston is always negative. "Yeah, we won, but we might not next time." Cracks me up seeing as how long other fanbases go with nothing to show for it.

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[deleted] t1_jas7t5g wrote

[deleted]

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Its_me_mikey t1_jas8xhk wrote

They both their respective 2018 season. Pats beat the Rams in the super bowl in 2019 but still considered the 2018 season

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Angrymic2002 t1_jatawfx wrote

What radio show are you listening to? There is only one person on the radio who even talks hockey other than the weekend hockey shows and he said just the opposite.

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MathMaddox t1_jatbt8x wrote

Felger and Maz.

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Angrymic2002 t1_jate224 wrote

Felger spent the entire day talking about how the B”s will be able to sign who they need to sign and that they will be really good again next year. Maybe I heard it differently.

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MathMaddox t1_jatjo3y wrote

He was complaining yesterday that they were screwing the future and hated "all in". Maybe he realized the pick to the red wings was lottery protected.

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Angrymic2002 t1_jatb9hg wrote

My 20 year old daughter has been to 12 parades. One in uteri but it counts. She hasn’t been to one in over four years now. When will this nightmare end. /s

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_Reyne t1_jaqotlg wrote

They are 1 game away from a 10W streak as well. Wild

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[deleted] t1_jar6vn5 wrote

I'm not the hockey expert that many are, but I look at Kyle Dubas turning over 1/4 of the Leafs roster, and mortgaging the future, and I think "This year? When the Bruins are playing on another planet? What's the point? So we can survive the first round, and get creamed in round 2?"

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Sweatier_Scrotums t1_jarcncz wrote

Surviving the first round and getting creamed in round 2 would be a historically unprecedented level of success for the Leafs.

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[deleted] t1_jard7j0 wrote

My friend, I'm in my 60's, and I remember the Leafs winning 3 cups in four years when I was a boy. I thought they were always going to be there...

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Sweatier_Scrotums t1_jardmmy wrote

I'm a Browns fan in my 30s. My dad is in his 60s, and he first got interested in the Browns when he saw them win their 1964 championship. So we feel your pain.

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walterpeck1 t1_jas7a48 wrote

As a guy in his 40s who saw John Elway shit on the Browns twice and then get shit on in the Subperbowl after that,

lol

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shiathebeoufs t1_jarhifg wrote

If you take a look at the Leafs' championship window (current contract timelines), it's basically the next 1-3 years. This is also historically one of the best Leafs teams in the past 30 years... Boston is just insane. Have to go for it, regardless of stupid amazing Bruins

EDIT: Also the President's Trophy winners are 2-13 in the last 15 years for the cup... just saying, there's a chance :)

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Uncle__doctor_soup t1_jar8rxv wrote

Dubas is up for contract renewal and knows if they don’t make it out of the first round he’s done so he’s saying fuck it and hoping for the best

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MathMaddox t1_jarisl3 wrote

Exactly. He's mortgaging the Leafs future, not his own. If it doesn't work its someone else's problem.

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Curator44 t1_jaq455u wrote

As someone who lives in Buffalo and has tragically been a Sabres fan past the Ryan Miller greatness, we were among the easiest teams they could’ve asked for to get this feat

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Adam_Ohh t1_jargk99 wrote

Feels like Lucic running over Miller really was the straw that broke the back for you guys.

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dimension_42 t1_jasyvm4 wrote

That single hit absolutely burned that team to the ground.

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ndr29 t1_jas4qur wrote

They look like a “team”. Where as some clubs are throwing money at this and that.

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radiokungfu t1_jar45eb wrote

As someone who watches 0 hockey, whats the difference between team points and player points? Google says gretzky took 34 games in 83 to score 100 points. Isnt that much faster??

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Bob_Ross_was_an_OG t1_jar516n wrote

Teams get points based on the games they play, players get points based on goals or assists they have. They are independent of each other.

Team points - 2 points for a win, 1 point for an OT/shootout loss, 0 points for a loss.

Player points - 1 point for a goal or assist.

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MathMaddox t1_jarj568 wrote

The bruins player generated 21 points last night (goals + assists) but received 2 team points (1 win).

There can be two assists per goal, so a total of 3 "player" points possible per goal (1 for goal +2 assists). You may see a "+/-" stat. This is the number of points generated while on the ice. A negative number means you were on the ice when the other team scored more often then when your team scored.

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QAPetePrime t1_jas9ij5 wrote

I hate the Bruins, but they have been playing inspired hockey all season. No real vulnerabilities. They are a machine this year.

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ZarosGuardian t1_jaspdn8 wrote

I'm pretty tired of Boston area teams winning, almost solely because of the Patriots, but I'm pretty fine with the Bruins winning it all. They got to be careful though, because the Lightning were extremely dominant in the regular season a couple years ago and they got swept by a team that had never won a playoff series until just then in the Blue Jackets. Cockiness will get you kicked in the teeth.

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FatOldRugbyDude t1_jarzfat wrote

It’s Boston’s world this season, and we’re all just living in it.

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Sad_Bolt t1_jas67vy wrote

If the past 10 years have proved anything in Hockey, regular season really doesn’t mean much and just because you played great for it doesn’t mean jack come post season.

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ugmold t1_jat528z wrote

NHL.com doesn't seem to know when I checked this morning.

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brentsg t1_jaucke4 wrote

Wonder if we’ll get to see them lose another Final before this core dissolves.

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NotAnADC t1_jauhw4s wrote

Gotta love that when Buffalo makes the news it’s something shitty for them.

  • Damar Hamlin
  • Freak Snow Storm
  • Other team records
  • Cop hospitalizing old man
  • Losing best games of year

I’m sure there’s more.

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elsinore11 t1_jarvfxa wrote

Teams didn’t get a point for overtime losses before 2015, so this record isn’t really applicable before that.

−3

RawlingsRaptor t1_jas7g84 wrote

Lol what? Teams would get a point for a tie and then when they got rid of ties, teams got a point for an OT loss. It’s always been this way

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elsinore11 t1_jasayc8 wrote

Maybe I should phrase it better? Starting in 2015, a third point is created when OT begins. You now get one point for overtime losses and shootout losses. So teams heading into OT now receive an average of 1.5 points where before it was an average of 1.0 points.

Put another way, only 9 of 32 NHL teams are currently under .500.

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daulm t1_jat8znj wrote

>where before it was an average of 1.0 points.

This is also not accurate. The rules changes eliminated ties after overtime, prior to that teams could still lose in OT and earn a point, they could tie in OT and earn a point, or they could win in OT and earn 2 points.

A lot of OT games used to end in a tie, so teams are getting more points than they used to, and the bruins have surely earned a few more points due to the OT rule changes, even if they are not great at shootouts.

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elsinore11 t1_jatexmz wrote

If you lost in OT before the change, you’d receive zero points. Teams essentially played defense and settled for the one point so they didn’t go home empty handed.

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daulm t1_jaw4rke wrote

This is from the wiki for Points in Ice hockey:

> A rule that was instituted in the 1999–2000 NHL season states that when a team loses in overtime, they shall earn one point for making it to overtime.

It is also how I remember the scoring before the league removed ties and implemented shootouts. This happened in the 05-06 season.

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ozril t1_jaszi11 wrote

You're wrong in several ways congratulations. You know they've had sudden death OT since 1928 right?

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elsinore11 t1_jatem6t wrote

Yes but before 2015 if you lost in OT you received zero points. Now you receive 1 point for losing.

0

berriesnbball_17 t1_jarvpnw wrote

As a Bruins fan I can almost assure you even though they look like a wagon now they won’t be lifting the cup

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