Florida Panthers @ Boston Bruins

6:30 PM at TD Garden

Watch on: TNT, CBC, TVAS, SN, NESN, BSFL

Boston Lines

Matt Porter via Daily Faceoff - a projection based on morning skate today

Brad Marchand - Patrice Bergeron - Jake DeBrusk
Pavel Zacha - David Krejci - David Pastrnak
Taylor Hall - Charlie Coyle - Tyler Bertuzzi
Trent Frederic - Tomas Nosek - Garnet Hathaway

Matt Grzelcyk - Charlie McAvoy
Hampus Lindholm - Brandon Carlo
Derek Forbort - Dmitry Orlov

Jeremy Swayman -  starter
Linus Ullmark

Florida Lines

Jameson Olive via Daily Faceoff - previous game

Carter Verhaeghe - Aleksander Barkov - Anthony Duclair
Nick Cousins - Sam Bennett - Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen - Anton Lundell - Sam Reinhart
Colin White - Eric Staal - Zac Dalpe

Gustav Forsling - Aaron Ekblad
Marc Staal - Brandon Montour
Josh Mahura - Radko Gudas

Sergei Bobrovsky - confirmed starter
Alex Lyon

If the Boston coach goes through with putting in Swayman over Ullmark, that's the sort of move you have to hope pays out for you. Otherwise, you might be the guy who takes the blame if it all goes to hell.

Series through 6 games

Scores

  • Game 1 - 3-1 Bruins
  • Game 2 - 6-3 Panthers
  • Game 3 - 4-2 Bruins
  • Game 4 - 6-2 Bruins
  • Game 5 - 4-3 Panthers
  • Game 6 - 7-5 Panthers

Shots

At five-on-five the Bruins are 53% Corsi, 55% Fenwick, 50% xG (see the heatmap) and 47% of high-danger Corsi. I include that last to quantify how much of their shotshare advantage they are wasting on junk shooting. The Panthers, meanwhile have an inky-blue blob of death right in the goalie's face.

Goalies

Linus Ullmark has allowed 20 goals (all-situations) on an expected of 19. Swayman has played 3:10 in a game where Ullmark was ejected for trying to fight Matthew Tkachuk – who was very up for it.

Alex Lyon has allowed nine on an expected of 8.4, and Sergei Bobrovsky has allowed 14 on an expected of 13.

All goalies are average, and it remains to be seen if Swayman can buck the trend of most teams not based in New York state, who are not goalie-ing anyone.

Skater Stats

Boston overwhelmingly dominates the top echelon of players by Corsi % or Expected Goals %. Even more importantly, by Goals %.

But on every list, one name mixes in: Matthew Tkachuk. He is the pivotal player for the Panthers in the same way Victor Hedman was for the Lightning. When he is on the ice, they are an elite team. When he isn't, they are ordinary.

Florida's big weakness isn't actually forward depth, although they look like a one-line team trying to create a top-six by moving Tkachuk around. Their problem is their defence. This is the top D by TOI at five-on-five:

  1. Gustav Forsling - 115
  2. Brandon Montour - 112
  3. Marc Staal - 99
  4. Radko Gudas - 91
  5. Aaron Ekblad - 83
  6. Josh Mahura - 63

This is Boston's:

  1. Charlie McAvoy - 111
  2. Dmitry Orlov - 106
  3. Hampus Lindholm - 102
  4. Brandon Carlo - 93
  5. Derek Forbort - 78
  6. Connor Clifton - 42

Forsling is a good find for Florida, but he ain't McAvoy. And the addition of Orlov has made Boston better on defence overall than they are up front.

Florida's key to success is to get the Tkachuk line out as many minutes as humanly possible, while Boston needs to get David Pastrnak in the offensive zone and in prime shooting location a lot more than he's been so far.

On paper, this series should have been over in four games. The Bruins have spiked their own guns with poor goaltending (by their standards) terrible defensive quality allowed and just enough in scoring from their top players (plus a well timed hot streak by Taylor Hall) that they are in Game 7.

When the Bruins changed coaches, they gave away their defensive discipline and grinder mentality, and opened up their style of play. When the Panthers changed coaches, they just got a lot less offence, but a more efficient net-front focused style. Their problem in this playoffs is that their regular season power play has deserted them, and they are mostly living off the five-on-five success.

None of that was supposed to matter, though, because the Bruins were just going to shut the door with their goalie.

Other games

The Growlers can close out their series with a win tonight.

Kamloops plays Game 2 this evening, and the Sarnia Sting lost again to the London Knights.

Note the time of the game in Boston if you're watching. And go... well? Who do you want to win that game?

Game Coverage