The Boston Bruins are an insanely good hockey team at the moment. In their last 24 games they are 21-2-1. They’ve only given up 64 goals for the season, the fewest in the NHL and 12 ahead of the next best 78 allowed by the Rangers. Amazingly the Bruins have also scored the most goals per game of any team in the league (their 121 goals are just behind Chicago’s 122 and Vancouver’s 123, but both those teams have played 3 more games than Boston). That puts their goal differential at +57 through 34 games, 20 more than Detriot’s 2nd highest +37. And since their 3-7 start, Boston is a totally absurd +62 over the last 24 games. Twice recently they played other division leaders in the Eastern Conference; a 6-0 pounding of Philly on 12/17 and an 8-0 drubbing of Florida last Friday (not to mention how badly they have embarrassed the Northeast’s 2nd place Maple Leafs so far this season).
How about a few individual stats? Tyler Seguin and Brad Marchand are tied for the league lead in +/- at 25, and half of the overall top ten are Bruins (Chris Kelly 6th at +21, Patrice Bergeron and Zdeno Chara tied for 7th at +20). And the goalies? Starter Tim Thomas is 2nd in the league in save percentage at .943. Backup Tuukka Rask is 1st at .945.
It all adds up to a level of utter dominance rarely seen in professional sports.
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About Mark Vandeusen