Here we go again – Boston Bruins have to be thinking about blowing series last year

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The lede from Wednesday’s Boston Herald said it all: “Here we go again.”

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It has to be in the minds of the Boston Bruins. The collapse from last year. The team with the best record in hockey history out in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

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Out after leading 3-1 against a Florida Panthers team that qualified for the playoffs in the final days of the regular season and finished 43 points behind them in the standings.

This Bruins team isn’t that Bruins team. The captain, Patrice Bergeron, has retired. The playoff playmaker, David Krejci, has retired. The veterans who were supposed to understand winning and leadership — Taylor Hall and Nick Foligno — went on to play in Chicago for one of the worst teams in hockey.

Last year, the Bruins had 135 points. This year, 109. The difference between last year and this year from a playoff sense may be the experience and understanding of coach Jim Montgomery. In the Florida series, Montgomery was too late on the switch of goaltenders and it probably cost Boston the series.

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This time around, the plan was to rotate Jeremy Swayman and Linus Ullmark, as he has all season long, until the plan became — we have to win and the way Swayman has played in the series, there has been no point in changing goaltenders after Game 2.

It would be surprising if Swayman wasn’t in goal Thursday night in Toronto. He has been that good in the series — he’s allowed just six goals against in four starts and part of an overtime period.

He was in goal in Game 7 last year when Carter Verhaeghe scored in overtime to enable Florida to advance. He was in goal when Brandon Montour scored in the final minute of the third period which sent that game to overtime. He understands dreadful defeat.

The Bruins had the lead and the series won with a minute to go against Florida.Just as they had the series won when the puck was on Coyle’s stick in overtime Tuesday night at the TD Garden and he wasn’t able to score.

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Some of those thoughts linger in Boston. What if they’re a team that can’t get over themselves? What if the defeat of last year was part of the reason they came out so afraid in Game 5. There is a way the Boston Bruins play and that wasn’t in in the first two periods of Game 5.

And why was that?

Was it an off night or was that defeat last year so overwhelming it won’t go away so easily. Go back to the Blue Jays World Series years and the years before they were champions. They were known as a team that couldn’t win in the playoffs. They were known as a team that failed to come up big when it mattered.

And then Roberto Alomar hit a home run in Oakland and everything changed. They won one World Series, then another. Only one team in the past 30 years has done what the Blue Jays did and that was Joe Torre’s stacked New York Yankees teams with Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada.

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The Blue Jays got past their own past — and that’s where the Bruins find themselves right now against the Maple Leafs. Both teams dealing with their own past failures.

There is an ebb and a flow to almost every competitive Stanley Cup series. One minute, one team looks unbeatable. One minute the other one does. How you deal with each often becomes the difference in a series.

But as well as the Leafs played in Boston on Tuesday night — and it was their most complete game of the series — they barely won. They won 2-1 in overtime. They scored just one goal in regulation time. And Coyle had a puck on his stick in the first minute of overtime that could have ended the series. It was that close.

Joseph Woll made the save. John Tavares then made the unlikely one-handed rush that led to the Matthew Knies overtime winner about 100 seconds after the stop on Coyle.

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This is how close playoff hockey can be. One save, one shot and it’s on to Game 6. And as the veteran hockey writer Steve Conroy wrote in Wednesday’s Boston Herald: “Here we go again.”

Here we go again — but for which team?

The Leafs looked, in Tiger Williams’ words, like they were done like dinner after Game 4. The Bruins looked rather done themselves after two periods of Game 5.

So who is feeling it now? The confidence level of any athlete is tested every shift in every playoff season. How do you respond to the higher level? How do you match your opposition? How do you plan for each game, internally and externally.

The Leafs didn’t have hockey’s best goal scorer, Auston Matthews, for Game 5 and that should have brought a level of confidence to the Bruins. It should have — but it didn’t.

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The best Leaf in Game 5 were probably Max Domi and Matthew Knees, with Morgan Rielly not far behind them. All of them were more noticeable than the great David Pastrnak, who hasn’t had a great series. All of them accomplished more in the game than Bruins’ captain Brad Marchand, who had been the series MVP before Tuesday night.

Now it’s one game and winner take all, but only if the Bruins win. A year ago, they needed a win in Games 5-6-and-7 against Florida and lost in overtime in Game 5, lost in Game 6 after leading in the third period, lost in Game 7 in overtime, after having a lead with more than a minute to play in the third period.

A series like that never leaves you. You might move on. You might think it’s behind you. But for the coach, for the goaltenders, for 11 of Boston’s regular lineup, they remember. They know the feeling. They hate the feeling.

They don’t ever want to feel that way again.

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