The Boston Bruins have found new life since their coaching change that happened almost a month to the day. After an 8-9-3 start under Jim Montgomery, the Bruins have gone 9-4-0 under Joe Sacco, and find themselves back in the hunt for not only the playoffs, but possibly the division too.
Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk talked about the Bruins possible return to form on Daily Faceoff Live.
Frank Seravalli: I tend to believe that the Boston Bruins are a good team that had a really poor start to the year. They’re not a perfect team by any stretch of the imagination, but I think it’s hard to sit here now and even ask the question, “is this a fake bump”?
Look at the standings. The Bruins were at sub-.500 when they made the coaching change. They’re now basically three, if you count a game in hand, potentially five points off of the division lead. The Toronto Maple Leafs haven’t really had a huge stumbling block this year, the Florida Panthers haven’t either. And yet the Bruins are three to five points away from that.
That’s a pretty significant turnaround, and I would say that that’s more just this team regressing to the mean. They’re playing more like they should and just wait until they get a run of really hot goaltending from Jeremy Swayman, it’s going to be something probably even better.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Yeah, and that’s exactly where I wanted to go next with this. I started to dig into some of the numbers because, I’ll be honest, I sometimes think the coach bump thing gets a little bit overrated. People just think it’s an easy little solution in a narrative. And I was like “well surely Jeremy Swayman’s played better since the change”, and sure his numbers have gone up a tick, but this isn’t a guy who all of a sudden is bouncing back to his .915% save percentage form.
You can see an .884% under Jim Montgomery, and so far through 9 games played under Sacco, it’s only an .893%, but the big difference is under Jim Montgomery, they were 22nd in the league in shots against per game. They’re now all the way up to 3rd, more than 5 fewer shots against per game. The system in front of Swayman has gotten way better.
And you’re right, if they can get a run of him being back to his .915% or, like we saw at points last year, go on a run where it’s a month of .920% for Jeremy Swayman, that top of the spot in the division is still very much within reach.
You can watch the full episode here…
