Four hockey truths that some will find tendentious but which are all legit

Tuesday 4/23/24

Charlie McAvoy is a slightly above average NHL defenseman. That's all he has ever been and all he will ever be. In time he will be average and then a worse than average NHL defenseman. If you are a defense-first team and he is your top defenseman, you have a problem. If he's your best offensive defenseman, you have a problem. To put it in architectural terms: His ceiling is that of a ranch home.

The Bruins' single biggest problem throughout the history of their franchise is this: They are a regular season team. They are not a playoff team. They were a regular season team in 1970-71 (and, frankly, throughout the whole of the Orr/Esposito era, they just had so much talent that they won twice when they didn't have to go through Montreal), 1982-83, 1989-90, during all of the years they won the Presidents' Trophy, and especially in 2022-23, in which the Bruins authored the greatest choke job in NHL history. Why do you think the Bruins are rotating goalies right now? Do you really not understand? They are trying to make the postseason as much like the regular season as possible because they are soft, just as the Bruins have been historically soft, and this is what they do to try and create a comfort level. You should not need a comfort level in the NHL playoffs. All you should require is raw meat and some spit for your wounds.

The greater the significance of a hockey game, the more that face-offs matter. When a team is losing face-offs consistently, chances are they are going to lose and that will be a big part of why they lost. If you had a choice, would you let the opponent start off with possession of the puck seventy percent of the time? How do you think that's going to end up working out?

Every single short-side goal that a goalie lets in is a bad goal. There are no exceptions. Stopping a shot on the short-side is entirely about position and not about ability. It isn't about reflexes, it's not physical. It's being fundamentally sound and in the right place. It's about math and not getting the very basic problem wrong.