As you may know, the Bruins are known to be a pretty good team in the grand scheme of the NHL but they are also in fourth place in their division. So why are they in this place if they have some very good players and are considered in the top echelon of the NHL? It could be just because their division is very difficult or it could be a lack of motivation because the top players feel like they are guaranteed to have the position they do.

The Bruins' record is pretty good at 26 wins, 14 losses, and 3 overtime losses as of February 7th but they just seem lackluster and off this season. When compared to the teams above them in the division they seem pretty competitive. Those teams being the Toronto Maple Leafs at 25 wins 10 losses and 3 overtime losses the Tampa Bay Lightning at 28 wins 10 losses and 5 overtime losses and the Florida Panthers at 28 wins 9 losses and 5 overtime losses. All these teams look like they are pretty close in skill but the three teams above the Bruins look much more consistent than the Bruins.

When the Bruins are playing to their best ability they look like an extremely dominant team and you would think they were one of the best teams in the league but they haven’t been able to play like that consistently until very recently. They have two or three games where they look extremely good and then five or six games where they look unmotivated and tired.

A lot of fans have just chalked it up to being in a very hard division and them being overwhelmed by all these teams that are very good in the Atlantic division. But they can clearly play well because when the team has a good motivator like after one of the players made the all-star team as a starter and another as a backup and like the flick of a switch they have become consistent and very good.

After some trial and error earlier in the season and trying a lot of different combinations on lines two to four they decided to break up what was called the perfection line. This line consisted of Patrice Bergeron Brad Marchand and David Pasternak and was very dominant for quite a few years and most teams would focus on these guys to no avail because they were still scoring at an insane rate. But these guys seemed to get very motivated when this line was broken up and seemed to want to produce enough to be put back on the same line.

After the retirement of David Krejci which was a big blow to the team because he was a very good center and was playing on the second line with Taylor Hall who after coming to Boston last year started to produce at an insane rate. Sadly, at the beginning of this season, he wasn’t quite as good as he was because he had lost his star center and was forced to make a lot of the plays on his own because of this. 

After the perfection was broken up, David Pasternak was put on the second line with Taylor Hall and they both started to speed up their scoring by a huge amount while on the first line Bergeron and Marchand complemented by Craig Smith really started to step up their scoring as well.

But even after all of the improvement that this team has seen throughout the season, they continue to be outclassed by a good amount of the teams in their division. But they are catching up to the Toronto Maple Leafs being only 3 points behind as of January 31st, 2022.

As of January 30th, 2022 the “perfection line” has been reunited and in their game, they didn’t have a great game but most of the team didn’t perform very well. The only goal for the Bruins coming in the 3rd period by second-line winger Craig Smith. The team allowed 6 goals by the Dallas Stars who have not been performing the best this season despite this they were able to manhandle the Bruins throughout the entire game.

Ultimately I think the lackluster performance by the Bruins compared to the rest of the Atlantic Division is due to not only competition as this division has some of the best teams in the NHL right now and being in the Eastern Conference because both of these divisions have multiple teams that have broken 60 points at this point in the season. 

But there is also a lack of consistency with the way the Bruins have been playing in this season as they will have a couple of games where they look like the team that ran through the rest of the league in 2019 and then a few that look like the 2015 team that was known for being very bad just a few years after being the Stanley Cup champs.