When you’re a Boston Bruins fan, rooting for the Florida Panthers would not sound like an excellent or enjoyable concept. And it makes good sense — the Panthers eliminated the Bruins from the Stanley Cup Playoffs in every of the final two seasons.
However this spring is a bit of completely different.
When the Bruins dealt captain Brad Marchand to the Panthers on trade deadline day in March, they acquired again a conditional second-round draft choose in 2027. This second-rounder will grow to be a 2027 or 2028 first-round choice if the Panthers win two or extra rounds on this 12 months’s playoffs and Marchand performs in at the very least 50 p.c of Florida’s postseason video games.
Given how essential it’s to the Bruins’ future success that they’ve as many high quality draft picks and commerce belongings as doable, it might actually assist Boston if that conditional second-rounder grew to become a first-rounder.
So despite the fact that it may be robust, Bruins followers ought to be rooting for the Panthers to achieve at the very least the Japanese Convention Ultimate over the following month.
What are the possibilities they make it that far?
Properly, the Panthers are presently the favorites to win the Japanese Convention for the third straight season.
However it will not be straightforward. The Panthers must beat their in-state rivals, the Tampa Bay Lightning, within the first spherical. The Panthers eradicated the Lightning in 5 video games in Spherical 1 final season. This 12 months’s sequence ought to be more durable, although. The Lightning ranked No. 3 in 5-on-5 targets scored this season, whereas additionally having the third-best save proportion.
If the Panthers make it to Spherical 2, they’d probably need to play the Toronto Maple Leafs, who gained the Atlantic Division. The Leafs haven’t reached the convention finals since 2002 and have gained just one playoff sequence within the final 20 years. Toronto could be very gifted, however you’d have to love Florida’s probabilities of profitable a possible playoff sequence versus the Leafs. The Panthers have an enormous edge over the Leafs in playoff expertise and high quality of goaltending.
Nothing is assured within the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The Bruins know that higher than anybody. That mentioned, B’s followers ought to be cautiously optimistic concerning the probabilities of that 2027 conditional second-rounder turning into a future first-round choose.
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