The game was no masterpiece, but the score itself (2-1) was pretty darn predictable.
The Bruins, after all, may be in playoff position -- seventh in the East after beating the Leafs in overtime -- but as has been the case nearly all season, they're the league's lowest scoring team, eight goals back of 29th-place Edmonton and 21 short of Toronto.
That's a big change from a year ago, when Boston was one of the league's top scoring teams with roughly 3.30 per game, better than the Capitals and second to only Detroit. In total, the Bruins are on pace to finish with 77 fewer goals than last season -- nearly a goal a game in one of the biggest season-to-season drops ever in the NHL.
It's a fall that has them battling for their playoff lives with four games to go.
Gone from the Bruins is Phil Kessel -- the source of all the drama Saturday in Toronto given the draft picks involved -- and the 36 goals he produced in only 70 games last season. Those who have stayed, meanwhile, haven't been able to repeat their 2008-09 performances:
Marc Savard: 25 goals last year to 10 this season (due to injury) Mike Ryder: from 27 to 16 this season Zdeno Chara: from 19 to seven Milan Lucic: from 17 to eight (due to injury) Dennis Wideman: from 13 to four David Krejci: from 22 to 17 Blake Wheeler: from 21 to 17
You get the idea.
Marco Sturm, Patrice Bergeron and Mark Recchi have picked up some of that slack but not nearly enough, and despite the outstanding play in goal of Tuukka Rask (who was again terrific against Toronto), they nearly lost what was basically a must-win game versus the Leafs.
Had the Bruins come up short, the Rangers would have moved into eighth spot and bumped them to ninth -- this only a year after Boston finished first in the conference in a 116-point campaign.
Injuries have been a major factor, sure, and they miss Kessel to an extent, but there was also going to be a bit of a hangover after so many players overachieved and so much went right last season. (Wideman's a perfect example.)
The hero Saturday with two goals was Miro Satan, a player who had all of six goals prior to the game and yet still played nearly 20 minutes. He talked a little bit about his team's lack of offence after the game.
"I feel the pressure. It's been, the last few weeks, every game has been important so the feeling doesn't change," Satan said. "There's an urgency to produce, to get as many points as we can."
Also under the gun is Rask, the only regular starter in the league with a goals-against average under two (1.99) and the NHL leader in save percentage (.930). He's got a pretty well rehearsed answer when asked about the Bruins goal-scoring woes.
"You know, I just try to go one puck at a time," he said. "If you start thinking that you have to keep the score at zero or one that usually ends up going four or five. So you just try to keep yourself calm and trust the guys to create scoring chances and score some goals."
"He's been our best player probably," Satan said of the 23-year-old Rask. "The most important. All the games he's been in, you see how low his goals-against average is and everything, those stats don't lie. I think he's the biggest reason we're where we are right now."
The good news about where Boston is is that they're still right in playoff position, two up on the Rangers and three up on the Thrashers. The bad news, however, is their remaining schedule, which includes two games against the Capitals, one against the Sabres and one against the red-hot Hurricanes (19-9-3 since mid-January).
My guess is the Bruins need at least four points out of those four games to move on, and that won't be easy (barring Washington resting their big guns given they've essentially clinched the President's Trophy).
Should they make it, Boston is set for a meeting with one of the East's top teams, of which only the Devils have had trouble scoring goals. With Savard likely done for the year, they'll have to continue to win with (a) excellent goaltending and (b) penalty killing.
That adds up to a lot of low-scoring games, something they're used to by now.
"I think we've had some tough things happen to our team this year," coach Claude Julien said. "It's been hard on us, but at the same time, I've been around hockey long enough to see teams that at this point would have packed it in and our guys haven't. They've battled through it and I think we deserve credit for that. We're certainly not pleased or happy with where we are, we just got to work our way through it and hopefully have better things to come."