East Division round one predictions: Washington vs. Boston

I began these predictions with the North Division matchup between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens, but considering the fact that Washington and Boston's round one series kicks off tonight, I feel it's probably best to get my prediction in prior to the start of that series, so here we go!

East Division: 2nd place Washington vs. 3rd place Boston:

Washington

The Washington Capitals are a dangerous team - and I'm not just talking about Tom Wilson here. At various points of the season, Washington had a lot of key guys out of the lineup and still managed to go out and win games. A lot of games.

Coming out of the East Division with a 36-15-5 record was no easy feat, especially when you consider that at one point, the Caps were missing captain Alex Ovechkin, number one goaltender Ilya Samsonov, top 4 defenseman Dmitri Orlov and top line center Evgeny Kuznetsov from January 20th through January 30th after the four players broke COVID-19 protocol as a group, with Samsonov and Kuznetsov later testing positive for the virus and missing additional time.

During that stretch, the Caps won 4 of 5 games and collected 9 of a possible 10 points, with their only loss coming at the hands of the Buffalo Sabres on January 24th in a shootout.

The club really took off in March after posting an 11-3 record for the month, despite missing top six winger Tom Wilson for much of the month due to a 7 game suspension he had been slapped with by the Department of Player Safety for boarding Bruins defenseman Brandon Carlo, who ended up with a concussion in the incident.

Bottom line, even in the face of adversity, the Caps find ways to win.

Boston

The Boston Bruins are coming off of back-to-back deep playoff runs and are hungry to win their first Stanley Cup since 2011. Their core is still almost entirely intact from their last two postseason runs and they have one of the best goaltenders in the last decade in Tuukka Rask, who owns a career 2.27 GAA and .921 SV%.

The Bruins have an unsettled score with the Caps, but more specifically with Tom Wilson for the Carlo hit. What better place to settle the score that to pull off the first round upset and send the number two seed packing early?

The B's have one of the league's absolute best two-way centers in Patrice Bergeron, a world class pest who can also get it done on the scoresheet in Brad Marchand and one of the league's premier goalscorers in David Pastrnak. Add to that the fact that the Bruins were able to add Taylor Hall at the deadline and you have yourself one very deep and very dangerous team to contend with.

Prediction:

The Washington Capitals have two goaltenders who are huge question marks for the postseason, as neither Samsonov or Vanacek has any playoff experience whatsoever. Despite the fact that Vanacek has absolutely made the most of his opportunity in the regular season, I'm not fully convinced he will be able to stifle the Bruins' offense in a full 7 game series. Therefore, I'm taking the Bruins in 7 games. That said, I do fully expect Washington to take the first two games at home, just to keep things interesting.

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