A stranglehold on the Stanley Cup Final is what both teams will enter Game 5 aiming for. But for one player and one goalie, there’s a little added incentive to etch their name into the annals of NHL history.
Jordan Binngington can kill two birds with one stone if he’s to pick up the win on Thursday (8 p.m. ET; NBC; live stream).
Binnington, who has 14 wins in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, is one shy of matching the NHL record for most in a postseason by a rookie goalie.
The 15-win pace has been set four times previous -- Patrick Roy (1986), Ron Hextall (1987), Cam Ward (2006) and Matt Murray (2016). Three of those goalies -- Roy, Ward and Murray -- went on to win the Stanley Cup in those respective seasons.
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If Binnington does help the Blues to the Cup, he’d have the record all to himself with 16 wins.
Furthermore, a win at TD Garden in Boston can break another record, this time for road wins by a rookie.
Hextall didn’t win the Cup in 1987, but he won eight times on the road to establish the rookie mark. Binnginton matched that with his eighth in Game 2 and can move past Hextall on Thursday.
According to NHL PR, Binnington would become the fifth goaltender in NHL history – regardless of status – to record at least nine wins as a visitor in a single playoff year.
On the other side of the center line, Boston’s Charlie Coyle can join the company of The Great One in Game 5.
Coyle has a nifty little three-game goal-scoring streak going at the moment, helping him to tie for the team lead with Patrice Bergeron on nine goals.
NHL PR says only 13 players in league history have posted a goal streak of four games or more during the Cup Final.
Six of those have come in the expansion era, and a goal tonight would be the first time since Wayne Gretzky did it 34 years ago in 1985.
Another interesting stat: Coyle can become the seventh player in NHL history to reach the 10-goal mark in a playoff year after being acquired during the regular season. He was picked up by the Bruins shortly before the NHL Trade Deadline at the tail end of February.
And just a friendly reminder on how important winning Game 5 is: When a best-of-7 series is tied 2-2, the winner of Game 5 goes on to win the series 78.4% of the time (210-58), including 72% of the time in the Stanley Cup Final (18-7).
Scott Billeck is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @scottbilleck