Bruins To Face Familiar Foe In First Round Of Stanley Cup Playoffs

It’s onto the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the Boston Bruins with their regular season concluding Tuesday night.

And the Bruins will meet a rival on the ice to open the postseason.

Boston will square off against the Toronto Maple Leafs in the first round of the playoffs starting Saturday. Time of Game 1 has yet to be announced.

The matchup between the Bruins and Maple Leafs came to be after Boston fell to the Ottawa Senators in the regular-season finale. The Panthers took down Toronto, leading to Florida leapfrogging Boston for the Atlantic Division crown and earning a first-round meeting with the Tampa Bay Lightning, who took the first wild-card spot.

It feels like the Maple Leafs were Boston’s preferred playoff opponent — the Bruins won all four regular-season matchups — but they didn’t let on to that.

“No. You gotta beat them all,” Bruins goalie Linus Ullmark told reporters after Boston’s 3-1 loss to the Ottawa Senators at TD Garden, per 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Ty Anderson.

The Bruins really have had Toronto’s number since Jim Montgomery took over behind the bench. Boston is 7-1-0 against the Maple Leafs over the last two seasons. The Bruins won their last two encounters versus the Leafs by a combined 8-2 score, but the first two tilts of the season both went to overtime.

The Bruins and Leafs last faced each other in the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 2019 with Boston taking a first-round series in seven games.