Now that the Stanley Cup Final is reaching its halfway point it is time for our weekly look at the race for the Conn Smythe Trophy.
After their convincing 7-2 win in Game 3, the Boston Bruins enter Monday’s Game 4 (8 p.m. ET, NBC; Live Stream) with a 2-1 lead in the series and a chance to take complete control before it shifts back to Boston later this week. A win on Monday would give the Bruins a commanding 3-1 series lead, something that only one team has ever squandered in the history of the Stanley Cup Final (just as a reminder, it was complete madness took an insane sequence of events for that to happen). So, obviously, Monday’s game is pretty significant.
With the Bruins holding the lead in the series (as of this publication) they have most of the top leaders in the race.
But the Blues still have their contenders, too, if they are able to come back and win.
Let’s take a look at where the rankings currently stand.
[NBC 2019 STANLEY CUP PLAYOFF HUB]
1. Tuukka Rask, Boston Bruins. He was the favorite entering the series and nothing has really changed through the first three games to knock him out of that spot. Rask has played every minute of the playoffs for the Bruins and is still maintaining a .939 save percentage through the first 20 games. It is only the seventh different time in NHL history that a goalie has played in at least 20 playoff games and had a save percentage higher than .935. It is the second time that Rask has done it, making him the only goalie in NHL history to have that claim.
2. Brad Marchand, Boston Bruins. He hasn’t been as dominant through the first three games as he was in the earlier rounds, but a point-per-game average while playing a Stanley Cup Finalist is no small accomplishment. He has a strong chance to finish the playoffs as the leading scorer in the league. In almost any other year that would make him a slam-dunk winner for the Conn Smythe if his team wins. Only reason he is not the favorite right now is because his team’s goalie is having an historically good postseason.
3. Vladimir Tarasenko, St. Louis Blues. He is not going to finish with the best overall numbers in the playoffs, and he may not even be the leading scorer on the Blues, but if they manage to come back in this series and win three of the next four games Tarasenko is probably going to play a huge role. Given that he has a point in eight of the past nine games and had an eight-game point streak that ran throughout the entire Western Conference Final and the first two games of the Stanley Cup Final he is going to stand out. Recency bias is a thing, and if you have your best and most productive games in the final two rounds, you are probably going to get the award if your team ends up winning.
4. Patrice Bergeron, Boston Bruins. After a quiet start to the Stanley Cup Final Bergeron and his line finally erupted in Game 3. He has two three-point performances in the past four games and is still a force all over the ice despite a little bit of a slump in Games 1 and 2. The Bruins’ power play has been one of their biggest assets in the playoffs and nobody has done more to drive that than Bergeron with a league-leading seven power play goals. Before this season he had just seven postseason power play goals in his entire career.
5. Torey Krug, Boston Bruins. His hit in Game 1 will be replayed on Bruins highlight reels for years to come, especially if they end up winning the series, but that is not what brings him into the Conn Smythe race. It’s the fact he is one of the biggest game-changers the Bruins have on the blue line. In his 346 minutes of 5-on-5 ice time this postseason he is cruising along with a 55 percent Corsi rating while the Bruins are outscoring their opponents by a 14-8 margin. Individually, he is up to 16 total points (two goals, and a league leading 14 assists) in 20 games and has three multi-point games. That includes a four-point effort (the first ever for a Bruins defender in Stanley Cup Final history) in their Game 3 win on Saturday night.
6. Jaden Schwartz, St. Louis Blues. He was going to cool off eventually because let’s face it, no one consistently scores on a quarter of their shots for an extended period of time. But he is still the Blues’ leading goal-scorer and point-producer and has single-handedly been the difference between winning and losing in at least three games for the Blues this postseason.
More Blues-Bruins Game 4
The Wraparound: Blues look to flip the page
Blues vs. Bruins: Three keys to Game 4 of Stanley Cup Final
Stanley Cup Final: Sean Kuraly breaking through for Bruins
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Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.