By: Jason Cooke | Follow me on X @cookejournalism
If you’ve sporadically tuned into Boston Bruins games this October, there’s a slim chance you’ve seen the Black and Gold net a power play goal. Through their first four games of the season, they’ve been granted 18 opportunities with an extra attacker. With that, the B’s have mustered just two tallies.
That 11.1 percent success rate ranks them 25th in the league, and although it is extremely early, what is supposed to be a strength under Jim Montgomery’s Bruins has been one of their most glaring weaknesses. Let’s dive into what’s been going wrong on the five-on-four.
Difficulty with the zone entry
Never mind what is happening in the offensive zone, the Bruins are struggling to simply enter the attacking zone in the first place. Montgomery has been known for his coaching philosophy of holding onto pucks and stressing the importance of puck possession. This mindset has been visible on Boston’s attempted zone entires.
Oftentimes, the Bruins seemingly refuse to dump the puck in on the power play breakout. Instead, they opt to try to beat a defender one-on-one before kicking the puck out to a wheeling winger on the boards. While a clean entry is ideally what you are looking for on a power play, sometimes the best course of action is to make the last line of defenseman turn around and chase a puck into the corner.
In this play from Monday’s matinee loss against the Florida Panthers—where the Bruins were blanked 0-for-4 on the power play—Brad Marchand tries to do just that. You can see Marchand surrounded by four white jerseys in the frame, streaking across the blue line attempting to play the puck through a pair of sticks. There are two problems here. First, Marchand isn’t exactly in a position to succeed. It looked like David Pastrnak tried to free himself as a passing outlet, but he ultimately never made himself a viable option. Meanwhile, there are no other Bruins in the offensive zone. This essentially created a two-on-four situation while on the power play.
Let me stress this again: dumping the puck in the zone on the power play break-in is certainly not the first option. But when nothing else is there, sometimes the best course of action to retrieve the puck is to get rid of it first and put the defense in a position to make a play. This exact idea worked here when the Bruins pivoted to dumping it in:
Trouble in the corners
This is one of the more concerning habits the Bruins seem to be falling into at this point in the season. There were numerous times against Florida where Boston found themselves outnumbered in puck battles—on the power play. The whole advantage of the power play is having an extra player that the opposition can’t defend. Hence, there should never be a situation when opposing penalty killers have more bodies on a puck than the attacker. Well, that happened on Monday.
In this clip, three Panthers converge on a puck in the corner, leading to an easy breakout that forced Boston to retrieve the puck in their end and regroup. Montgomery went out of his way in his post-game press conference to admit that Florida was “the standard right now in the NHL for winning battles.” On Monday, this applied to both five-on-five as well as the power play for the Bruins. You can’t score goals if you don’t have the puck.
Individual play leads to miscues
But once the Bruins do in fact possess the puck, they aren’t doing themselves any favors with unnecessary one-on-one playmaking. We’ve all seen Matt Poitras’ blunder that ultimately led to the puck in the back of Boston’s net. But Boston’s youngster isn’t the only one falling victim.
While Pastrnak wasn’t looking to necessarily make an ill-advised move through this defender, he held onto the puck for too long, leading to a blind pass to the center of the ice that yet again had the Bruins regrouping in the neutral zone. When a team’s penalty killers are as aggressive as Florida’s were, the Bruins couldn’t afford to hold onto pucks for long amounts of time. That only opened the door for killers to make their move and force the puck carrier to make a quick decision, a very hard thing to do at the highest level.
That’s not to say the Bruins didn’t tease instances where the power play looked good. In the clip above, the B’s put it all together for what created a great chance on a Charlie McAvoy shot pass to Elias Lindholm. The Bruins quickly moved the puck around the umbrella formation and retrieved pucks when Panther sticks got in the passing lanes. This is how Montgomery wants his power play to operate, and it will inevitably lead to goals at an efficient rate.
For the Bruins, it’s all about putting all the pieces together to consistently find that medium. And at this point in the season, there truly is no need to worry. The Bruins have some of the most talented players in the league on their top unit, and they certainly have the talent and IQ to be a dangerous threat on the power play. But if these issues are lingering when the Bruins arrive at game 15, for instance, that will be a signal for concern. Until then, I’d look for Boston to focus on these areas and let the results pay dividends on the scoreboard.
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