Bruins And Leafs Will Renew Playoff Rivalry

For the first time since the 2018-19 season, the Boston Bruins and the Toronto Maple Leafs will meet in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

With the Boston Bruins losing 3-1 to the Ottawa Senators on Tuesday night and the Maple Leafs falling 5-2 to the Florida Panthers, the Panthers won the Atlantic Division. That means that they will play their in-state rivals and top Wild Card team, the Tampa Bay Lightning, in the opening round of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs, and the Bruins and Maple Leafs will meet for a 17th time in the postseason.

The Bruins owned their longtime Orginal 6 rivals this season, going 4-0-0 against the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Bruins won 3-2 in a shootout on Nov. 2 at TD Garden, 4-3 in overtime at Toronto on Dec. 2, and then won the final two games against the Maple Leafs 4-1 on March 4 in Toronto and March 7 in Boston. The Bruins did not trail the Maple Leafs in any of those four games this past regular season.

The two teams have split their 16 Stanley Cup Playoffs series that they have played each other in, but the Bruins will enter this latest playoff tilt against Toronto having won the last six series between the two rivals. The Bruins swept the Maple Leafs in the 1969 quarterfinals, won the 1972 quarterfinals in five games, swept the 1974 quarterfinals, and have won the last three series (2013, 2018, 2019) in seven games.

Those last three series between the Boston Bruins and Toronto Maple Leafs were epic battles that renewed the rivalry. In 2013, the Bruins blew a 3-1 series lead and were down 4-1 with just over ten minutes left in regulation in Game 7 but mounted a historic comeback. The Bruins got three third period goals, including the game-tying goal from Patrice Bergeron with 51 seconds left in regulation, before Bergeron’s historic overtime winner 6:05 into the extra frame.

That opening-round series sent the Bruins on a run to the 2013 Stanley Cup, where they lost in six games to the Chicago Blackhawks.

The Bruins’s seven-game series win over the Leafs in 2018 was followed by a second-round series loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning, but after beating the Maple Leafs in 2019, the Boston Bruins once again advanced to the Stanley Cup Final, where they lost to the St. Louis Blues in seven games.

The latest chapter in the Bruins-Leafs playoff rivalry is expected to start this Saturday night at 5 p.m. or 8 p.m. ET at TD Garden. The NHL will confirm dates and times for each game in the best-of-seven series by late Wednesday night.

The BHN early prediction:

Maple Leafs in 6