Were the 2022-23 Bruins as good as their record?

[SnowblindNYR]

First of all, let me start off saying that I'm not a hater of that Bruins team. I was in awe of them. I recently said in a thread on the main board to prove a point about the Presidents' Trophy that I hold them in higher regard than what I deem to be one of the weaker Stanley Cup champions of recent years the 18-19 Blues despite bowing out in the first round. I will also say that this question has nothing to do with a sample size of 7 games in the first round. That said, while I'm not an expert on that roster it seemed to me that outside of a full season of Lindholm they didn't make that many changes. The biggest changes were two goalies playing out of their mind and I guess Pasta having a great season (though didn't Marchand take a step back?). Somehow that team took a quantum leap without much in terms of personnel changes and went from a wildcard team to the best regular season team of all time by record.

It reminds me of the 2011-12 Rangers who the season before only really gained Brad Richards but got career seasons from Gaborik and Lundqvist and went from a poor 7th seeded team that got embarrassed in the playoffs against the Caps in 5 to a team that had the best record in the east and lost the Presidents' Trophy by 2 points. I always thought that team REALLY overachieved. When you have the likes of Ruslan Fedotenko on your 3rd line you're not that good (I want to say that Brandon Prust was on that line too).

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[The Panther]

It's an interesting aspect of hockey that, quite often, the "best' team is not the team that wins the championship. It happens in other sports too, obviously, but it happens way more in hockey.

It's easy to explain why. In baseball, the best "team" (is baseball really a team sport? Debatable.) will win more than the worst team, almost always. Over a 7-game series, disregarding injuriy and so on, the better team will usually win. In basketball, even more so -- the best 5 or 6 guys go against the other team's best 5 or 6 guys for pretty much the whole game, so the club with the better 5 or 6 players will usually win out.

In hockey, the four or five best players on a team (i.e., the guys the entire franchise is built around) are OFF the ice for the majority of the game. Often, minor and depth players make the difference in one team beating another. So, that's odd right there.

More pertinently, in baseball and basketball (and, usually, in soccer) there aren't any unintentional scores or flukes that decide contests. When a basket in scored in the NBA, it's because the guy who shot it was trying to make a basket. There aren't accidental runs scored in baseball. But in hockey, in any given game, anywhere from 10% to 80% of the goals scored could be unintentional or flukes -- pucks off player's asses bouncing in, passes that get deflected and go in, etc.

Considering all this, it's easy to see why worse hockey teams will quite frequently beat better hockey teams. (Which isn't to say that every time a "worse" team beats a better one, it's a fluke -- sometimes the "worse" teams just outplays the better one.)

So, do I think the 2023 Bruins were as good as their record? Well, they were as good as any regular-season team has been in the Cap-era, so "yes" in that sense. But maybe "no" in the sense that they were eliminated early and, in future seasons, couldn't maintain that super pace.

(By the way, they weren't the "best regular season team of all time". It only looks that way because of the 3-point game era.)

 

[SnowblindNYR]

It's an interesting aspect of hockey that, quite often, the "best' team is not the team that wins the championship. It happens in other sports too, obviously, but it happens way more in hockey.

It's easy to explain why. In baseball, the best "team" (is baseball really a team sport? Debatable.) will win more than the worst team, almost always. Over a 7-game series, disregarding injuriy and so on, the better team will usually win. In basketball, even more so -- the best 5 or 6 guys go against the other team's best 5 or 6 guys for pretty much the whole game, so the club with the better 5 or 6 players will usually win out.

In hockey, the four or five best players on a team (i.e., the guys the entire franchise is built around) are OFF the ice for the majority of the game. Often, minor and depth players make the difference in one team beating another. So, that's odd right there.

More pertinently, in baseball and basketball (and, usually, in soccer) there aren't any unintentional scores or flukes that decide contests. When a basket in scored in the NBA, it's because the guy who shot it was trying to make a basket. There aren't accidental runs scored in baseball. But in hockey, in any given game, anywhere from 10% to 80% of the goals scored could be unintentional or flukes -- pucks off player's asses bouncing in, passes that get deflected and go in, etc.

Considering all this, it's easy to see why worse hockey teams will quite frequently beat better hockey teams. (Which isn't to say that every time a "worse" team beats a better one, it's a fluke -- sometimes the "worse" teams just outplays the better one.)

So, do I think the 2023 Bruins were as good as their record? Well, they were as good as any regular-season team has been in the Cap-era, so "yes" in that sense. But maybe "no" in the sense that they were eliminated early and, in future seasons, couldn't maintain that super pace.

(By the way, they weren't the "best regular season team of all time". It only looks that way because of the 3-point game era.)

Well I wasn't asking because they lost in the first round and I know there is a 3 point game era but they had the best record of all time. And my question is were they good enough for that record or did they just play well above their talent?