26. Bruins at Kings. Break the jewels from the crown!

Quick, everyone in the volcano!

Tough loss from an overall good effort. It is a shame the Bruins couldn’t come away with points from last night’s tilt. It would have meant a lot coming into tonight’s game where Boston is playing another Western Conference powerhouse in LA. LA isn’t having a real LA-type season yet they still find themselves in the playoff race. This is the same franchise that won a Cup as an 8th seed so I don’t count them out of anything.

I am not sure who starts for the Bruins tonight but one would think it would be Tuukka Rask. If that is true, Rask’s bane of existence this season has been the second game in back to backs. I did some math and this is what I came up with:

Rask in game 2 of back to back games: 1-3, .878 SV% and a 3.00 GAA.

That’s…just not good. It isn’t to say that Rask sucks or trade Rask or whatever the hell it is going to be twisted into, but I think it is okay to acknowledge when a player is playing below his capabilities. I guess you can asterisk those stats because three of the game were against Montreal which is the kryptonite of Tuukka, but the numbers are what the numbers are.

It is a tough situation. If you start Svedberg you have the mitten stringers who call up the radio shows saying “Yah I think that Peetah Charelli made ah lahge mistake signing Tuukkah to tha contract” because he doesn’t start 80 games a season. If you start Rask the numbers point to him not playing up to snuff and then the same mitten stringers call the radio shows saying the same shit. It is a lose/lose situation.

Then again, I’m sure someone will subtweet the shit out of this because I used the term mitten stringer.

WARNING: ADVANCED STATISTICS TALK. PLEASE DO NOT SEEK SHELTER. PLEASE DO NOT PANIC.

Fenwick%: The percentage of unblocked on-ice shot attempts (on goal or missed) taken by the player’s team; also known as FF%

If there’s something that makes LA really dangerous it is how they play when even strength. The team is 5th in the NHL in 5v5 F/A ratio at 2.25 but they’re not the possession monster they’ve been in years past. This year the Kings are 17th in Fenwick% at 50.28. For context, last year the Kings were 1st in Fenwick% at 56.09. Last year the Kings were second in the NHL in offensive zone start%. This year the Kings are 17th overall with only 50.07% of their zone starts coming in the offensive zone.

And yet through all of their offensive struggles (13th in G/G, 21st in PP%) they are still in the playoff hunt which means when LA finds it, they’ll be dangerous.

With all that said, the Bruins can hang with the Kings. The teams are built pretty similar and play a similar style but injuries are killing the Bruins right now. It has been evident on the penalty kill that they miss Chara. It has been evident on the power play that they miss Krejci. Losing two key players for long stretches can cause a team to lose their identity a bit.

Hopefully the effort put forth last night will carry over for the next three games and Boston can have a nice stretch off to rest before Chicago.

Projected Lines

Milan Lucic – Carl Soderberg – Loui Eriksson
Brad Marchand – Patrice Bergeron – David Pastrnak
Reilly Smith – Chris Kelly – Seth Griffith
Dan Paille – Greg Campbell – Simon Gagne

Dougie Hamilton – Dennis Seidenberg
Joe Morrow – Torey Krug
Matt Bartkowski – Kevan Miller

Tuukka Rask

Media

Puck Drop: 10:30pm EST
TV: NESN
Radio: 98.5 The Sports Hub

STREAMS: HERE