BHN Podcast: Bruins Not In Same Stratosphere As 70’s Canadiens

The 2022-23 Boston Bruins are having an historic season and could still finish with the most wins and points in NHL history.

No one can argue that.

As longtime Boston Globe and Hockey Hall of Fame scribe Kevin Paul Dupont noted on the most recent edition of the Boston Hockey Now Podcast, there is also no doubt that the team they still could surpass for the most points in a season, the 1976-77 Montreal Canadiens (134 pts), are in a whole other stratosphere that this current Bruins team isn’t and never will be close to. In fact, all of those seventies Canadiens teams are in a league of their own.

“It’s so hard to make this comparison from generation to generation, or decade upon decade,” Dupont pointed out. “However, I will say this, obviously it’s a 32-team league now, it wasn’t then. There was hardly any Europeans. No Russians at all, the Russians didn’t come in until the late eighties. Didn’t see the Czechs, didn’t see Scandinavians really. It was arguably a Canadian ‘Ole Boys’ Club really, and the Canadiens were stacked.

The Bruins had great teams. The Bruins went to the finals there in the middle with them, in the late seventies repeatedly. Or semis, couple of finals. Came up short in that whole run of 1943-1988 where they couldn’t get past the Canadiens in the playoffs. Not every year, but it did span those 45 or 46 years. For me it’s impossible to draw straight on comparisons. That ’71 team that lost early to the Canadiens and Ken Dryden. If you go back and look at the names, and the buildings also were a factor because the buildings weren’t all 85 by 200. The Garden had that small neutral zone

So there are all these sort of quirks and niches of the era that I don’t really think you can make a comparison, and you have lineups that are stacked that deep with players in the hall of fame. So start there.”

For more on what Dupont had to say on that as well as how he thinks Montgomery can keep his team sharp down the stretch, watch below or at the National Hockey Now YouTube channel.