It’s official: The Boston Bruins will not get the No. 1 or No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference.
Despite being the only team in the NHL to amass 100 points in the shortened 2019-20 regular season, locking up the Presidents’ Trophy, Boston dropped its first two games of the round-robin tournament, putting the top pair of spots out of reach.
The Bruins’ latest loss comes in the form of a 3-2 defeat at the hands of the Tampa Bay Lightning on Wednesday. Boston came back from two goals down, but Tyler Johnson’s tally with 1:27 to go broke the tie and gave the Bolts the win.
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And even though Bruce Cassidy said it “sucks” to not get the one seed, the B’s ultimate goal still remains.
“Well that part sucks, I’m not going to lie to you,” the head coach said after the game over Zoom. “But that’s the situation this year with the stoppage of play. We knew the rules going into it. That we would lose a bit of the advantage we’d gained. We are where we are now. We’re just trying to win a hockey game right now, get our game together for 60 minutes so that we can be at our best so that whoever we meet. This is one year I do believe the seeding is less relevant than others. I think everyone has discussed that. Would I have rather been No. 1 seed? Absolutely, keep it. That’s not going to happen so like I said, we’ll get ready for Washington and play the best game we can and prepare for the postseason. That’s our ultimate goal, we have to win 16 games. We knew that going in. That will still be our goal.”
The Bruins still can lock up the No. 3 seed but will need the Capitals, their next opponent, to go 0-2-0 or 0-1-1 over their next two games.
Boston and Washington wrap up the round-robin tournament Sunday.
