The line of Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron, and David Pastrnak has been on fire so far this postseason, continuing their regular season dominance. Pastrnak in particular has been putting up extraordinary numbers in relation to that trio, garnering 17 points in his 8 games so far. Not only does he have five goals (including a hat trick against Toronto), he also has 12 assists. Seriously, some of his passes have been so good HE can’t even look at them! How does he stack up with other NHL legends in playoff scoring?

For the purposes of this exercise, I looked at all individual players with 17 or more points in the playoffs, of which there have been 432 (Sorry Jake Guentzel). Lets start by just looking at him in comparison to other historical Boston players.

His 2.13 points per game easily ranks him first overall. Of every single Bruins season, Pastrnak is tied for 35th in points during a single playoff - in just eight games!

His closest comparable in Bruins history would be Phil Esposito’s 18 points in 10 games during the 1968-69 playoffs, or Barry Pederson’s 18 points in 11 games in 1982-83. Points per game wise, Esposito’s 1969-70 postseason of 27 points in 14 games is one of the best in NHL history, yet STILL not better than Pastrnak’s so far.

League wide, Pastrnak also fares well, with only six players having more points per game in a playoff than him. Darryl Sittler had 21 points in 9 playoff games during the 76-77 playoffs, and Mario Lemieux scored 34 points in 15 games during the 91-92 playoffs. In typical Wayne Gretzky fashion, he did it four times (84-85, 82-83, 80-81, and 87-88) Over his career Gretzky scores 17 or more points in the playoffs an amazing nine times in 17 trips to the playoffs.

One issue with using just raw point totals is that it doesn’t take into account the fact that 229 of the 432 (53%) playoff performances happened in an 18 year span (30%). To account for the increased scoring in those years we can look at the goals scored per game during the regular season and adjust using this years as a baseline. Doing that, David Pastrnak’s playoff looks even better, finding himself third in era adjusted points per game in the playoffs, behind only Gordie Howe and Jean Beliveau.

No matter which way you look at it, David Pastrnak is good at hockey. And he’s locked up for 5 more years at $6.67 million per year. And that is a good thing.