BOSTON — Exactly one-third of the Boston Bruins’ games this season have extended beyond the regulation 60 minutes.
So with the Stanley Cup playoffs just two weeks away, how does all that extra time played between October and April translate when the stakes are raised exponentially?
Will it behoove the Bruins to have played in 26 overtime contests — the latest being a 3-2 victory over second place Florida Saturday in a clash of the Atlantic Division’s top two teams?
“It can if you let it,” center Charlie Coyle said following his team’s four-game season sweep of the Panthers. “The more reps you get at it the more you figure things out, whether you win or lose. You can use that to your advantage.”
Let’s be clear: in no way, shape or form is regular season 3-on-3 overtime anything like the 5-on-5, heart-in-your-throat OT that playoff hockey is. It’s like comparing a pea and a tire; yes, they’re both round, but that’s pretty much where the similarities stop.
Extra time in the regular season is more of a freewheeling, firewagon style of hockey that gives guys the ability to carry the puck from their own end into their opponents with little to no defensive pressure. If neither team scores after five minutes, a shootout is held until someone wins.
Extra time in the postseason is, barring any penalties, 5-on-5 and goes on and on until someone scores. There is scant little open ice, and if a goal isn’t produced in the first 8-10 minutes of OT, it usually comes not so much via a skill play but rather off a fatigue-induced turnover or mental lapse.
“It’s a different animal,” admitted Coyle. “You miss out on a 2-on-1 in regular season overtime, and all of a sudden it’s a 2-on-1 going the other way. That doesn’t happen in playoff OT.
“But the mental strength, mental focus you need in overtime, where the pressure is heightened, next goal wins, that can help us mentally,” he added. “And we’ve seen a lot of them.”
Boston is now 5-1 in the six games since head coach Jim Montgomery profanely lit into his charges during a lethargic practice at Warrior Arena. They’ve since played with more urgency and have responded down the homestretch, coming up with particularly good wins in Nashville, in Carolina and Saturday against Florida in their last three outings.
“Maybe a little,” Montgomery said when asked if there’d be any carryover effect from the regular season to the postseason when it comes to his squad’s overtime proclivities. “But more importantly is the way we’ve grown and matured throughout the year and how we’ve been able to win games down the stretch.”
Overtime has not been particularly kind to the Bruins in recent playoff seasons. They lost Game 5 and Game 7 to Florida in last year’s shocking first round defeat. Going back to Game 4 of the 2013 Stanley Cup Final against Chicago, the Bruins are just 8-14 in overtime games.
But every postseason starts with a clean sheet, and what happened in past seasons shouldn’t have an impact on them this spring.
Saturday’s victory, where the rookie Boqvist found a lane on the left side, drove into the Florida zone and beat Sergei Bobrovsky short side, improved Boston’s record to 7-12 in games decided within the 5-minute OT framework. If you’re talking shootouts only, the Bruins are 4-3.
For a team with a fine 46-17-15 mark with four games left in the regular season, that’s an awful lot of points left on the table in the extra session. Even if you took half of those 15 OT/SO losses and turned those into wins, they’d be atop the Eastern Conference standings for the second straight campaign.
But they’re not, and that is what it is. There is no gimmicky hockey when mid-April rolls around; it’s your best against our best and yeah, we’re both exhausted by I’m scoring before you do and that’s all there is to it.
So goes the Bruins’ mindset.
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Phil Stacey, the Executive Sports Editor of The Salem News, covers the Boston Bruins and pro hockey for CNHI Sports Boston. Contact him at pstacey@salemnews.com and follow him on X/Twitter @philstacey_SN