MoneyPuck<\/a>. They got help around the Eastern Conference in their path, as the Canadiens and Red Wings both lost in regulation Sunday. Boston is a long shot to catch Montreal for the third spot in the Atlantic Division, but it’s also a long shot that they get pushed out of the playoffs altogether. Entering Monday, they have easily the best point percentage (.609) of all the teams in the wild card hunt with four games left in the regular season.<\/p>\nThe schedule is not easing up on them. On Tuesday night they have a tough road test and potential playoff preview against the Carolina Hurricanes, then they get three days rest between games, which feel much-needed at the moment. They will then close out the regular season with their final three games in a four-day span: a Saturday matinee against the Tampa Bay Lightning, the second leg of the back-to-back in Columbus against the Blue Jackets, then the season finale at home against the New Jersey Devils on Tuesday, April 14. It would behoove the Bruins to clinch their playoff spot within the next three contests, which seems quite doable, considering the odds. They could then opt to rest players in the final game, if they prefer that over a tune-up before the postseason begins.<\/p>\n
The Bruins are now at the point that missing the playoffs wouldn’t just be a letdown, it would be one of the all-time late-season collapses. It could be as simple as grinding out a point or two over their next three, so there’s really no excuse not to at least come away with that.<\/p>\n
Matt, a North Andover, Massachusetts native, has been with The Sports Hub since 2010. Growing up the son of Boston University All-American and Melrose High School hall-of-fame hockey player Steve Dolloff, sports was always a part of his life. After attending Northeastern University, Matt focused his love of sports on writing, extensively writing about all four major Boston teams. He also is a co-host of the Sports Hub Underground podcast and is a regular on-air contributor on the Sports Hub. Matt writes about all New England sports from Patriots football to Boston Celtics and Boston Bruins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Boston Bruins collapsed in overtime in a sluggish effort against the Philadelphia Flyers on Easter Sunday, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5099],"tags":[154,95,5132,530,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-544236","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-bruins","8":"tag-boston","9":"tag-boston-bruins","10":"tag-bostonbruins","11":"tag-bruins","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}