Longtime Leafs foe Pastrnak has surprising compliment for Toronto

Boston Bruins forward David Pastrnak may be a longtime rival of the Toronto Maple Leafs, but that hasn’t stopped him from showing a bit of respect for his divisional opponents.

Earlier this week, Pastrnak spoke to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman about several topics, including scoring the series-winning goal in Game 7 in overtime against the Leafs earlier this spring.

“We proved a lot of people wrong; last year, we were not even supposed to make the playoffs. We beat a better team on paper [in the Leafs],” Pastrnak said.

The Bruins finished with 109 points in the regular season compared to Toronto’s 102, though Boston’s roster had been expected by many to undergo a regression last season following the retirement of Patrice Bergeron.

Perhaps it’s a genuine compliment from a place of genuine respect from Pastrnak.

Or perhaps it’s a bit of mind games learned from his teammate Brad Marchand, who once admitted to a group of reporters he was a Leafs fan while growing up in Nova Scotia.

Either way, the Leafs will get their first crack at Pastrnak and the Bruins again on October 26 in Boston when the two teams face off at TD Garden.

Though the Bruins couldn’t advance out of the second round this year, Pastrnak himself had quite the spring. After being eliminated from the playoffs, he joined the Czechia national team, which ended up winning gold on home soil at the 2024 World Championships.

The first thing I was thinking was, ‘I want to re-live it again.’ I was already saying, ‘I want this again.’ I needed this win for my career, because I’ve been waiting for a big win like that. But I’m more happy for the country that we won it here… Right now, I’m focusing on winning the Stanley Cup with Boston. That’s my next goal.”

With the Leafs and Bruins having met four times in the playoffs since 2013, it seems like either team’s Stanley Cup dreams will have a good shot of going through one another.

You might also like:
• NHL in the process of adding even more expansion teams