Could the Boston Bruins’ ability to stop Auston Matthews, the NHL’s top goal scorer, come from an unsung star on the blue line? The defenseman for the Boston Bruins, Brandon Carlo, is maybe coming off of his greatest NHL season and will probably be essential to stopping the Maple Leafs shooter.
Carlo will be the defenseman that Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery matches up against Matthews the most in the Bruins-Maple Leafs Eastern Conference playoffs matchup, if the 2023–24 regular season is any guide. This season, Carlo played the third-most 5-on-5 minutes (31.22) against Matthews. In four games against the Bruins, who went 4-0-0 against their longstanding Original 6 opponents this season, Matthews was limited to three goals on 20 shots and three assists.
“I thought Brandon was great,” longtime NHL analyst and former NHL head coach and executive Pierre McGuire said on the latest Eye Test Podcast. “He’s a playoff-style player, too, because matchups do matter. I’m not saying he’s as good as Kjell Samuelsson was when I was coaching in Pittsburgh because Kjell was a really important player for us, as much as an important player for us as Ulfir Samuelsson was for us because Ulfie was critically important. We just played straight matchups every single game; every single series, we played straight matchups, and we would drive the opposition nuts because they didn’t know where we were coming from.
Thus, it is imperative that, if you are in Toronto, you ascertain early in the series against whom Carlo is being played. When playing a matchup game, there are various strategies to uncover that if you’re Boston, and there are various strategies to break that down if you’re Toronto, so as a staff, you just have to work that out. The Bruins should be moving on to the second round if Carlo can stop Matthews and the high-octane offence of the Maple Leafs, just as Ulf Samuelsson did to the team in 1991 and 1992. Older Boston Bruins supporters probably don’t want to be reminded of what a bitter rival like Samuelsson did to the Bruins and, more specifically, former Bruins winger and current team president Cam Neely.