Boston Bruins Are Off to Best Start in Decades, but Can They Go All the Way to the Stanley Cup Finals?

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Who is the best team in the National Hockey League after two months?

It might be the same team that ends up lifting the Stanley Cup Trophy in the summer: the Boston Bruins.

Boston is on a tear out of the gate here in the 2022-23 NHL season, and was 22-4-1 after 27 games played. Even more stunning was the Bruins home run to open up their campaign: they won 14 games in a row in Boston before finally losing to Vegas in a shootout. in a potential Stanley Cup Finals preview.

After that loss, the Bruins then went out to Vegas six days later and returned the favor, beating the Golden Knights on their home ice 3-1.

Boston already has two seven-game winning streaks so far, and has not dropped back-to-back contests at all.

Those look like numbers that sports books in New Hampshire around the country might use to make Boston the futures favorites: right now, though, the Bruins will have to settle for favorites to win the Eastern Conference title.

So far, most NJ sportsbooks like 888 have resisted the urge to put the Bruins ahead of the defending Stanley Cup champion, the Colorado Avalanche, but the gap has closed somewhat in the first two months of the season. Colorado is currently priced at +550, with Boston +650 (and Vegas +750), mostly because there is still so much of the campaign left. So much can change in the next five months before the playoffs start; we could (almost certainly) see injuries and trades change the landscape before April of 2023.

Even with that hot start, in the Eastern Conference, there were two teams within three points of the Bruins midway through December: New Jersey (which started 21-5-2) and Toronto (18-5-6). While there was no team in the loaded Western Conference that could match any of those three teams’ starts, Vegas, Winnipeg, and Dallas were all playing well, and Colorado has finally started to heat up after a somewhat slow first month-plus.

That Stanley Cup hangover must have been pretty crazy.

Boston does have the best odds so far to win the Eastern Conference at +300, ahead of Toronto (+400), New Jersey (+500), and the three-time defending champion Tampa Bay Lightning (+700). The Bruins are -225 to win the Atlantic Division title ahead of Toronto (+250).

Is now a good time to back the Bruins to win any of the titles? Really, if you think they are going to do it, you might want to wait until they cool off a bit: you will probably get better odds in 2023 than you will right now. But the price is still pretty good, so if you are adamant the Prince of Wales Trophy is coming home to Boston for the first time in four years, back them now.

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