Slick, speedy Bruins push pace en route to victory

Team Nickelodeon proved their worth for the Boston Bruins in game No. 1 of the 2017-18 season, but let’s not put the kids in the Hall of Fame just yet.

Sure, it was a big game for the likes of Jake DeBrusk (one goal, one assist), Charlie McAvoy (one goal, one assist) and Anders Bjork (one assist) to help the Bruins to a 4-3 victory over the Nashville Predators Thursday night at TD Garden. It’s hard not to get excited after watching those performances, but it’s one game and they made their share of mistakes, too.

More importantly, the Bruins showcased their new style of play under Bruce Cassidy and it was an up-tempo, intense pace that hasn’t been seen around these parts in some time. That’s not a slight on Claude Julien because his system worked for a long time and it led to a Stanley Cup championship.

When Cassidy took over last February, he implemented his X’s and O’s and the players were receptive. They really didn’t have time to fully process the style change until the offseason and the players planned accordingly to prepare for the upcoming season.



To a man, the players worked on speed and agility during the summer and it was evident on Thursday. It was so much fun to watch. The fans loved it and no matter how this season ends, it’s going to be exciting hockey.

Can this team sustain that style of play for a long and arduous 82-game season? Cassidy believes it can.

“I do,” he said. “It’s an 82-game schedule, so we know there will be challenges along the way, but it’s the culture we’re tying to create. If we continue to work on our fitness and practice habits and get it in our heads that’s the way we want to play.

“We want to be relentless, not reckless, for 60 minutes. Today we were for about 58 ½ minutes, which is pretty good, so we’ll keep pushing it.”

How does it work?

There are a couple of ways it can be effective. The team needs to move the puck and the players need to move their feet. It sounds elementary or Mightymite-ish but it’s true. The other aspect is puck management.

The Bruins have been a successful puck-possession team in the past, but these adjustments make it a challenge.

“You see around the league that everybody wants to play fast, everybody wants to play with a high pace,” said captain Zdeno Chara. “Once you get possession of the puck, everything goes up and towards their net. The quicker you can get through those two zones – defensive and neutral zones – and play in the offensive zone, that’s good for you. The other team has to defend it and try to get the puck off of you.”

Sustaining this pace will be a challenge. There will be games when the Bruins can’t push it as much as they did against the Predators. There are pitfalls to playing this style and goalie Tuukka Rask knows exactly what the team needs to avoid so it doesn’t implode.

His biggest concern is playing reckless offensively could lead to plenty of odd-man rushes against, and that doesn’t bode well for a goalie. The players in front of him are aware of that aspect and the defense was solid against the Predators.

“There was no recklessness out there,” Rask said. “We had layers coming back and that’s one of the biggest things we need to keep doing.”

It starts in practice. Cassidy doesn’t mess around during the hour-long session. It’s as though the Bruins are playing the Montreal Canadiens in Game 7 every practice. Bodies and pucks are flying all over the place in a controlled chaos and it’s as exciting as watching games. The Bruins believe this style will work.

“We’re in great skating shape,” he said. “We skate a lot in practice and that’s where it starts. You’ve got to work hard outside the games and then the speed becomes second nature and that’s how it looked tonight.”

Gaining an early lead gives a team an advantage too. If allows you to control the pace and tone it down when needed, as Cassidy explained. In a case like that, he’ll look for better matchups.

“We don’t want to tone it down much,” he said. “It’s how we want to play. We want to skate from start to finish. We don’t want to go into shells. We don’t want our forwards skating backwards a lot. We want our D up in the play.”

When the Bruins did make mistakes, it wasn’t due to a lack of energy. Boston managed the puck well and controlled the neutral zone.

Getting back to the rookies, adrenaline can be a massive ally and it was on Thursday. There will be ebbs and flows for Team Nickelodeon and those players experienced both positives and negatives in the first game.

“We were pleased and they all had good moments. They all had learning moments throughout the course of the game, like we expected,” Cassidy said. “They stayed with it, they’re good players and obviously helped us win a hockey game, but that’s what they’re here for and they were put into good positions to do that and our veteran guys pulled them along well.”

All in all, it was a solid building block for the new-look Bruins. The kids did their job for the most part and the pace was exciting to watch. Predators coach Peter Laviolette put it perfectly: “They were faster than us.”