I’ve posted my dissertation on the B’s a couple times before, so this time I’ll keep it short. They are a good team, and are for real in the sense that they will be a serious player in the East come playoff time. But they aren’t winning the Cup. They are almost a carbon copy of last season’s Penguins, IMO.

Posted by Nathan from Jonny Ericsson's ice cream truck on 01/12/09 at 10:22 AM ET

It is refreshing to see hockey talk about a team that isn’t from Detroit or Pittsburgh! However comparing the Bruins to last years Penguins is garbage! First of all Pittsburgh has two incredible superstars in Crosby and Malkin. Unfortunately you need more than 2 players for a game. The Bruins this year have a fabulous goaltending tandem with Thomas and Fernandez both having amazing seasons. They have also lead the way with scoring from a bunch of kids! Kessel, Krecji, and Wheeler have performed extremely well! Savard is a young veteran player who has taken command of the offense and the defense has been outstanding! Claude Julien has been the coach the team needed. Even with injuries to their veteran players (and Bergeron-again) the rookies and young players have performed above and beyond what was expected. Ryder has finally found a team that appreciates him for his talent as well. The Bruins have already played Detroit and Pittsburgh this year and have beaten them handily! I think this team has every shot at the Cup this year! Cheers to the Bruins and their achievement!  They are for real!

Posted by hockeyfan4eva on 01/12/09 at 11:04 AM ET

The Bruins basically have everything covered: A wealth of forwards..two quality goalies, a stud Dman and a decent cast of veteran Dmen to go with Chara. I’m sure they will add a top Dman at the deadline and they will have no argueable weakness. However, I don’t see them winning the Cup. They have no real Stanley Cup playoff experience. Just winning their first round series will be huge for them. If they get past that then they could make a run at the Finals since the East is full of pretenders for the most part.

Posted by kevin from boston on 01/12/09 at 11:23 AM ET

They have also lead the way with scoring from a bunch of kids!

Sounds like the Pens last year.

The Bruins this year have a fabulous goaltending tandem with Thomas and Fernandez both having amazing seasons.

I seem to remember a goalie that was “fabulous” last year and was supposed to slay the mighty Red Wings single-handedly as a result.

the defense has been outstanding!

Last year I remember people saying something about how great the Pens’ no-name defense was—until Detroit unlocked it.

Claude Julien has been the coach the team needed.

Ah, yes, so was Michel Therrien. Look at him now. Julien was fired twice and never got past the second-round. He’s been a good fit to this point, sure, but so was Therrien last season till his team got out-classed in the finals. Also funny how Therrien and Julien have very similar NHL coaching histories.

The Bruins have already played Detroit and Pittsburgh this year and have beaten them handily!

Forget the Pens, they are frauds. But remember—a single game against Detroit early in the regular season is far from a seven game series against a team like Detroit in late spring or early summer. The B’s lost to a crummy Minnesota team last week—does that mean the Wild are better than the B’s? Absolutely not.

I have enjoyed watching the B’s in the games I’ve seen this season. They are fun to watch. They look like a team that will be good for years to come. But like the Pens they have to keep it together or it could fall apart in a hurry. Also like the Pens they lack experience. Their “veteran” forward, Savard, has only played 7 games in the postseason in his career. Who do the B’s look to when they need to be rescued at a critical moment in a critical game in the playoffs? This season will give them the experience they need to be playoff winners, and if they keep the team together (Kessel, Krejci, and Lucic all coming up to RFA in the next two seasons, and the B’s are less than 4 million from this year’s cap ceiling) they could be the dominant team in the East.

I’m just saying, this is almost a carbon-copy of the talk people had about the Pens late last season going into the playoffs, and look how quickly it changed. Malone wanted to get paid. Hossa went for the “grass is greener”. Roberts left. And some of the role playing kids that were so important last year have fallen off a bit this season, perhaps showing a hangover from last year’s success and failure.

There’s still half a regular season left. Things change quickly. You’re only as good as your worst hockey. I know you’re all sick of hearing about Detroit, but it’s the perfect example—the first 30 games they played some very poor hockey, but still managed to hold second place in the West in the process. Find ways to win. Right now, all the games I’ve seen, and all the numbers (as the initial post shows) dictate that the B’s are playing about as well as is expected. When they fall off that pace, if the W’s keep coming, then we will talk more seriously about them being a Cup contender. But right now I’m pretty confident that the Wings, Sharks, or Ducks would all feast on the Bruins in a Cup final, with little hesitation.

Posted by Nathan from Jonny Ericsson's ice cream truck on 01/12/09 at 11:53 AM ET

I think the Bruins ARE going to win the Stanley Cup they are that good.

Posted by Goon from Grand Forks, ND on 01/12/09 at 11:57 AM ET

teams will tend to have a combined shooting and save percentage of 100%; if, during an earlier part of the schedule, teams are cruising well above or below that figure, it is likely that over time, they will fall back in line with the general trend

That sounds like a pretty far fetched assumption. Checked the original article, and I’m not sure that i buy it either. Obviously, mathematically the league will end up at 100% when summing ESSV% and ESSH%, but i would also assume that good teams would sum to over 100%, and poor teams would end up lower than 100%. Certainly seems to be the case so far this year (the exception being Detroit on the high end at 0.998 and Minnesota on the low end at 1.010).

Interesting stat, but i don’t think you can assume that a team averaging above 100% will fall - it could just mean they have good goal tending and good shooters - which good teams will have. Cause they are, ya know, good.

Posted by pwnicholson from Nashville, TN on 01/12/09 at 03:27 PM ET

Yeah, the “tend to 100%” argument isn’t a very convincing one, but empirically so far, it’s turned out that way most of the time.  I think mc79hockey just framed the argument the wrong way, though--there’s absolutely no reason why any team’s PDO usually be around 100%; there’s just a ton of luck involved with both shooting and save percentages.  And so any team that is well above or below 100% has probably been very lucky or very unlucky and will probably regress towards 100%.  Shot differential, on the other hand, doesn’t appear to involve much luck and is pretty consistent between different parts of the season.

Also, be careful with that argument, pwnicholson.  A team’s past PDO will be pretty strongly correlated with their past performance (measured in terms of goals and points), so it’s natural that teams with high PDO’s will be perceived to be good teams.  The trick is finding a stat that correlates strongly with future performance.

Keep in mind, too, that until you start breaking shots and percentages down by situation (even strength, power play, and penalty kill), this is a fairly muddy picture.  Teams that take more penalties than they draw (like Anaheim) will spend more time on the penalty kill than the power play, which will tend to push their overall PDO down, since a shot is harder to stop on the PK.  And similarly, teams that draw more penalties than they take will tend to have higher overall PDO’s.

Boston’s record is a combination of the Bruins being a good team, the Bruins playing weaker competition, and them being lucky.  They have a legitimate shot at the Cup, because they’ll likely have an easy ticket to the East finals, whereas the West is shaping up to be a real dogfight for almost every team in almost every round.

Posted by Ryan from Toronto on 01/12/09 at 03:58 PM ET