By: Tom Calautti | @TCalauttis
With only two preseason games remaining, the Boston Bruins still have more questions than answers when it comes to their forward group. The regular season opener is eight days away, and Head Coach Marco Sturm is still figuring out how to best deploy his forwards not named David Pastrnak, Morgan Geekie, and Elias Lindholm.
Tuesday night seemed to be the first “dress rehearsal” of the season for the Black and Gold as they dressed the majority of their NHL lineup against the Philadelphia Flyers. There were some positive developments, namely the return of Hampus Lindholm, but the question of ‘what will this lineup look like on October 8th’ is still far from answered.
The result on the night wasn’t horrible. The Bruins defended well (especially when Lindholm and Charlie McAvoy were on the ice), the penalty kill was perfect at 4/4, and the team battled back from a one-goal deficit in the third period.
The problem was that Boston struggled to find offense outside of its top line. David Pastrnak set up the opening goal of the game by finding a streaking Sean Kuraly in the slot, and Lindholm and Geekie combined for the equalizer in the third.
It’s no secret that finding production out of his bottom nine forwards will be the most challenging part of Sturm’s job. The question is whether or not he’ll be able to do it.
The Bruins started the night lined up like this:
The Bruins finished the contest with 15 total shots on goal. Of the nine non-top-line forwards, six registered at least one shot. Only two of those skaters had multiple shots on net.
The biggest issue right now with the middle six is that no one has truly stepped up to prove they belong. Some additional line tweaking may be needed to maximize this forward group, and there’s one potential trio Sturm briefly put together that sparked some life in his team.
Late in the third period, Sturm decided to jumble his lines, elevating Matt Poitras to the second line alongside Pavel Zacha and Casey Mittlestadt while sending Viktor Arvidsson down with Fraser Minten and Matej Blumel. The result was arguably Boston’s best non-goal shift of the game.
Poitras and Zacha have some history (albeit short) playing together. In 52 minutes across the last two seasons, the duo have an xGF% of 59.01, have out-chanced opponents 22-19, and HDC are 7-2
There’s some additional evidence that this potential new grouping could work out. On Blumel’s power play scoring chance early in the game, it was Poitras who made a nifty play along the boards to Mittlestadt, who feathered the setup pass to Blumel.
I’ll be the first one to admit that the sample size is small, and the competition wasn’t exactly NHL caliber. But when you’re searching far and wide for goal-scoring, it never hurts to exhaust all combinations before figuring things out.
It may not be the perfect trio, but Sturm has to do everything in his power to squeeze out scoring from his forward group. At this point, give the trio of Zacha, Mittlestadt, and Poitras a try on Thursday night and take things from there.
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