Hockey involves a lot of luck. I say that not to denigrate hockey -- my favorite sport to watch on television -- but only to point out that in a game where scrums are so frequent, action is so frenzied, and yet so few goals are scored, the random bounce of the puck has a lot to do with whether you win or go home. That's why hockey playoffs are played out in 7-game series. One game can't tell you who the better team is. In a 7-game series, you have to really and truly -- comprehensively, one might say -- beat the other team to send them home.
In the closest playoff series of all time -- 3 overtime games, and all 7 decided by a single goal -- it's safe to say that the Washington Capitals and Boston Bruins were about as close to evenly matched as it gets. Some will say that Washington wanted it more, out-hustling the B's when it counted. Some will say that the Bruins let it get away from them when they really should have won. Really the only thing to say is that in 4 out of 7 games, the Washington Capitals put more pucks in the net than the Boston Bruins. And the Bruins are home early because of it.
In hockey, the "random bounce of the puck" can be tempered by three factors primarily: your ability to get shots on goal, your ability to deny the opponent shots on goal, and your goaltender's relative ability of your goaltender to make the marginal saves on random bounces that would otherwise have found the net.
Here are the shots on goal for the series:
1: BOS 30, WAS 17
2: BOS 44, WAS 39
3: WAS 32, BOS 29
4: BOS 45, WAS 21
5: BOS 37, WAS 32
6: WAS 39, BOS 31
7: BOS 32, WAS 27
Focusing solely on SOG, then, two games were won decisively by the Bruins and 5 others were more-or-less a wash (the two teams within 8 SOG of each other). This leads me to make two main conclusions about the series.
(1) It really was pretty close. With the exceptions of Game 4, which the Bruins dominated but lost, and Game 1, which they dominated and won, no team dramatically outplayed the other at any point.
(2) Because of that fact -- the closeness of the games -- it really did come to a lot of of luck. True, Braden Holtby did outplay Tim Thomas, and Timmay did give up a couple soft goals, but really there wasn't a tremendous difference between the goaltenders. At the end of the day, the puck bounced Washington's way a few more times than it bounced Boston's way. Last year, it bounced our way more than a few times this time of year.
If the Bruins wanted to win this series, they needed to come out of the gate and dominate from Game 1. They needed to overwhelm the Capitals with physicality, control the puck more, and produce the chances that would have led to goals. The B's failed to do that.
In net, Tim Thomas played poorly by Tim Thomas standards, but he's not to blame for the series, not nearly. He even submitted a typical Tim Thomas Game 7 gem -- he deserves blame for neither of the 2 goals -- but by that point it was too late. The puck bounced Washington's way on both of those goals, and the Capitals move on.
Disappointing though it was, the Bruins have nothing to be ashamed of. They played through a number of key injuries (Horton, McQuaid, Bergeron) and had a good chance to win it in the end. This team is as fun to watch as any in the NHL, and as fun to root for as any team in New England. They didn't lift the Cup this year, but I can't wait to watch them try again in 2013.
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