ANALYSIS: B’s never recaptured their regular-season mojo

We’ll never know.

All the data in the world can’t tell us for sure how far the Bruins would have gone in the playoffs if the COVID-19 pandemic hadn’t interrupted the NHL season. Analytics can’t tell us which wildcard team they’d have met in the first round. Statistics and probabilities can’t say for sure if they would have won that series, and then rolled through two more to make a second straight trip to the Stanley Cup final series. [...]

We’ll never know.

All the data in the world can’t tell us for sure how far the Bruins would have gone in the playoffs if the COVID-19 pandemic hadn’t interrupted the NHL season. Analytics can’t tell us which wildcard team they’d have met in the first round. Statistics and probabilities can’t say for sure if they would have won that series, and then rolled through two more to make a second straight trip to the Stanley Cup final series.

We’ll also never know if the Bruins would still be playing today if they’d pushed harder for a higher seeding in the three-game round robin they had to play inside the Eastern Conference bubble in Toronto. We can’t even say for sure that the Bruins would have beaten the Lightning in Round 2 if their No. 1 goalie, Tuukka Rask, hadn’t decided to leave the team to be with his family in the middle of Round 1 against the Hurricanes.

We can make educated and informed guesses, of course, but a lot of numbers tell us that the Bruins were positioned to complete the unfinished business left over from 2019.

Best record in the NHL — 44-14-12 — at the March 12 pause. Best team defense in the league, best 1-2 goalie tandem in Rask-Jaroslav Halak, best goal-scorer in the league (David Pastrnak; tied with the Capitals’ Alex Ovechkin) completing arguably the best line in hockey with Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand. Tremendous special teams — No. 2 on the power play, No. 3 killing penalties.

Could you ask for more? Of course. Secondary scoring and size topped that list, and while neither player found his stride in the handful of games they played, trade deadline acquisitions Ondrej Kase and Nick Ritchie still had a dozen games to find their footing before the playoffs. (Remember how patience paid off last year with newcomers Charlie Coyle and Marcus Johansson?)

What we know now is that the Bruins never recaptured much of anything once the NHL figured out a way to restart the season. If it wasn’t for their power play, which came to life after the Hurricanes tied the first-round series (also the point at which Rask left the team), 1-1, they might not even have made it to Round 2.

In spite of the efforts of core Bruins like Bergeron, Marchand, Zdeno Chara, David Krejci, Torey Krug — all among the first players to show up at Warrior Arena for Phase of the NHL’s re-opening began — the B’s didn’t have a positive Phase 3 training camp. Pastrnak and Kase, somewhat famously, couldn’t participate because they had to quarantine upon returning from Europe just before the reporting deadline. Ritchie got hurt during the Warrior sessions, and the injury bled into the round-robin tournament. Rask had a finger injury while at Warrior, and missed a round-robin start in Toronto because he reported a COVID symptom (a cough). Pastrnak had to come out of the middle three games of Round 1 because of an injury. Halak ended up starting eight games in a row, including two in two nights against the Lightning.

It never looked, or felt, like it looked and felt in early March.

"No, it felt like we were starting a new season," said Marchand, who still managed to score seven goals and 12 points over the 10 real playoff games. "The amount of time we had off (March 10, their last regular-season game, through the July 13 start of the full camp at Warrior) was the same as an offseason. It felt like we were having a whole new year."

"Once we got back here, it wasn’t the same as a normal season," Coach Bruce Cassidy said. "It just wasn’t."

Marchand, Cassidy and others who spoke after Monday’s crushing, season-ending, double-overtime loss were quick to mention that all 24 NHL teams invited back to start the season faced similar, even identical challenges, and that they’d been grateful for the opportunity to work when so many of their fans can’t, and to resume pursuit of the Cup.

They’ll never again have the same opportunity they had this year, though.

The usual postseason exercise of determining who stays and who goes now begins, and the names involved are big: Can the Bruins find the deal that will keep unrestricted free agent Krug to stay? Does Chara, now 43, still want to play, and if he does, do the Bruins want to re-sign him? Does Rask still intend to play, and if so, does the team welcome him back?

We don’t have answers to any of that, either, but they’ll come. But the Bruins know that no team ever comes back intact, and that because they couldn’t find enough answers to the challenge of restarting the season, the 2019-20 team’s opportunity has been lost.

"It just kind of hit me after the game," said Krejci, eyes hidden by the bill of his ball cap, late Monday night. "The core group, a few of us, we have one or two, three years left.

"With the pandemic going on, you never know what’s going to happen. So, it’s just kind of — I just got a little sad right now."

"You never know how many opportunities you’re going to have a win a Cup," Marchand said. "Every missed opportunity — it hurts."