When the NHL suspended its regular season in mid-March, David Pastrnak's quest for 50 goals was put on hold.
On Tuesday, that quest officially ended when Commissioner Gary Bettman announced that when the league does resume play, it will jump directly to the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
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With 48 goals in 70 games, the 24-year-old budding superstar finishes just shy of the elusive half-century mark, a milestone that no Bruin has reached since Cam Neely in the 1993-94 season.
Overall, five Bruins have scored at least 50 goals in a season: Phil Esposito (5 times), Neely (3 times), Rick Middleton, Ken Hodge, and Johnny Bucyk. With a dozen games left in the regular season, Pastrnak easily would have become the sixth Bruin with a 50-goal campaign if the global COVID-19 pandemic hadn't halted the season.
But Pastrnak was still able to achieve a feat that no Bruin has accomplished since the mid-70s.
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His 48 goals are tied with Alex Ovechkin for the most in the NHL this season, meaning the two players will share the Maurice "Rocket" Richard Trophy as the league's leading goal-scorer. Pastrnak becomes the first Bruin to lead the league in scoring since Esposito accomplished the feat in six straight seasons, from 1969-70 to 1974-75.
Pastrnak, who also led the league with 20 power-play goals and tied for the league lead with 10 game-winning goals, becomes only the fifth Bruin who played the entire season in Boston to lead the league in goals, joining Esposito, Bronco Horvath (tied with Bobby Hull in 1959-60), Roy Conacher (in 1938-39), and Cooney Weiland (in 1929-30).
The cancellation of the rest of the league's 2019-20 regular season means that the Bruins also won the Presidents' Trophy for the first time since 2013-14 with a league-high 100 points, while the B's goaltending tandem of Tuukka Rask and Jaroslav Halak claims the Jennings Trophy for allowing the fewest goals in the league this season (167 for a 2.39 goals against average).