Bruins’ playoff odds are still great, but lack of scoring is a huge concern originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
The Boston Bruins have not yet secured a spot in the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs, and a lackluster weekend that included a regulation loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning and an overtime defeat to the Philadelphia Flyers didn’t do much to help their cause.
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However, their chances of achieving that feat over the next week still remain pretty high.
HockeyStats’ model gives the Bruins a 98 percent chance of reaching the postseason. MoneyPuck’s model gives the Bruins a 98 percent chance, too, while The Athletic has them at 96 percent.
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Four games remain on the Bruins’ regular season schedule, and none of them can be described as “easy”.
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The Eastern Conference-leading Carolina Hurricanes host the B’s on Tuesday. The Bruins play the Tampa Bay Lightning at home Saturday, before finishing up against a desperate Columbus Blue Jackets team on the road Sunday and then hosting the New Jersey Devils next Tuesday.
Here’s what the wild card standings look like. It’s still mathematically possible for the Bruins to finish as a top-three team in the Atlantic Division, but the chances of that scenario unfolding are extremely small.
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The B’s have a good cushion over the teams outside the wild card spots, and they hold the regulation wins tiebreaker over the Philadelphia Flyers, New York Islanders, Detroit Red Wings and Columbus Blue Jackets.
It would take a pretty significant collapse by the Bruins, plus other teams getting red hot, for Boston to miss the playoffs.
One thing that has helped the Bruins of late: The other teams around them haven’t played great over the last week or so. The Islanders have lost four straight games and fired head coach Patrick Roy on Sunday. The Red Wings have lost six of their last 10 games and the Blue Jackets are on a six-game losing streak.
The Bruins have lost three straight games, and a lackluster offense is largely to blame for those poor results. The No. 1 concern with the Bruins coming into the season was whether they could score enough goals to be competitive. But in a surprising twist, the offense has largely been a huge positive for this team all season, including the power play. The Bruins entered the Olympic break ranked sixth in goals scored per game and third in power-play percentage.
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But since the Olympic break, the B’s rank 20th in goals scored per game and 26th in power-play percentage. This downturn offensively was expected to some degree. The B’s have ranked near the top of the league in goals scored above expected all season. Several players on the team have had career-high shooting percentages (or close to it).
Morgan Geekie has scored a career-high 34 goals this season, which leads the team, but he hasn’t found the back of the net in 17 consecutive games. His last goal was March 5.
The analytics suggested the B’s would regress a bit offensively, and we might be seeing that unfold right now.
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This scoring regression might have come too late to derail the Bruins’ chances of reaching the playoffs, but it could hurt them significantly in the first round.
The most likely Round 1 matchup for the B’s is the Hurricanes, per HockeyStats.
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Carolina has allowed the fewest shot attempts, the fewest shots on goal, the third-fewest scoring chances and the 12th-fewest high-danger chances at 5-on-5 this season, per Natural Stat Trick. The Hurricanes are very structured defensively, they’re well coached and they’re disciplined (fewest penalties taken among East teams in a playoff spot).
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Add it all up, and that’s a pretty unfavorable matchup for a team like the Bruins that’s really struggling to score.
Goaltending is often the deciding factor in the playoffs, and Bruins netminder Jeremy Swayman arguably has been the best player at his position this season. That gives the B’s a huge advantage over a lot of teams. But great goaltending only goes so far. You have to be able to score goals and take advantage of the opponent’s mistakes with a good power play.
That’s why the Bruins’ latest scoring woes are a concern. If it doesn’t get fixed, their playoff run (assuming they make it) could be pretty short.