Crucial Coyle line looking for traction, a ‘pretty average’ night from Tuukka Rask & more leftover thoughts from Bruins-Lightning

There’s plenty to digest after the Bruins’ 5-4 road loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday night — a last-minute defeat that left Boston with a couple of silver linings and plenty more lessons learned against the top team in the NHL. Here are a few leftover thoughts from Boston’s matchup against a potential playoff foe down the road:

Bruins need more from Coyle line

As evidenced by last year’s five-game exit in the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs — even a fantastic run by Boston’s top line of Patrice Bergeron, David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand is not going to be enough to topple a loaded Tampa Bay team.

During that playoff series, the Bergeron line compiled an absurd 23 points over a five-game stretch, while the second line of David Krejci, Jake DeBrusk and Rick Nash all tallied a goal. As for the third and fourth lines? A combined zero points during the series. Zero. Yikes.

Simply put, if Boston is going to get past Tampa Bay in a possible second-round rematch this May, it’s going to need more secondary scoring — something that Don Sweeney and the rest of Boston’s front office believed they addressed when they dealt for Charlie Coyle in late February.

On paper, Boston has some intriguing pieces to slot onto a third line that has largely been non-existent for extended stretches this season.

In Coyle, Boston has a big body (6-foot-3, 220 pounds) who, despite only registering four points over 15 games played, has been a plus-possession player, extending O-zone shifts by holding onto the puck and generating a 56.30 Corsi For Percentage — the second-best mark for any Bruins player with over 200 minutes of 5v5 ice time.

In Danton Heinen, Boston has a third-line winger that’s responsible in his own end and has managed to get on a roll offensively after earning a top-six promotion (20 points in last 23 games). Right wing is a bit more of a revolving door, but if there was a player worthy of a bump up in the order, it’d have to be Chris Wagner — who has been as advertised as a human wrecking ball (243 hits) but has exceeded expectations in the offensive zone with a career-high 12 goals.

This new-look third line has all the ingredients to give opposing teams fits — big bodies, responsible play away from the puck, tangible skill — and Bruce Cassidy has been clear that sparking chemistry between Coyle and Heinen has to be a priority before the postseason gets underway in a couple of weeks.

“I like their give-and-go, puck-possession mentality,” Cassidy said. “I think Charlie likes to lug it, Danton likes to get into holes. So he should be a good fit. He'll skate onto pucks, so that's one that we're going to keep an eye on. Obviously, if we're healthy going into the playoffs, that could be a pair that we look to use, depending on a bit of Marcus (Johansson’s) situation, right? Then it's finding the right winger for them.

“I think we have some guys there. (David) Backes has played really well for us lately, could go back in there. Could be a Wagner who's had a nice year? So that part of it, is kind of take care of it and hoping those two will develop some chemistry."

The potential has been there, but so far, the results really haven’t for the trio of Coyle, Wagner and Heinen.

Even though Coyle lit the lamp during the Monday’s loss to Tampa Bay, Boston’s third line struggled for most of the night against an aggressive Lightning forecheck — finishing the night with a brutal 9.52 Corsi For Percentage.

In other words, Tampa Bay held a commanding 19-2 edge in shot attempts during the 13:31 of 5v5 TOI in which the Heinen-Coyle-Wagner line was out on the ice. Yikes. Beyond Monday’s loss, this line has still struggled to gain much traction — generating a 20.45 CF% and a minus-7 shot differential through 27:12 of 5v5 TOI. Not what you’re looking for in a third line that will be needed to take beat loaded teams like Tampa Bay and Toronto.

While the return of Johansson does open up a few more possibilities for Cassidy when it comes to shuffling his lineup, the Bruins are running out of time to find a cohesive unit that will give Boston four functioning lines to roll out come the postseason.

"I thought his line started very slow,” Cassidy said postgame about Coyle’s line. “They lost a lot of battles. We talked about getting inside and driving. I thought Charlie responded well. Started attacking more, had some good opportunities going to the net. Big body, he's hard to handle. And we need that, particularly against a team like Tampa.

“We talked about that last year in May. We had a tough time getting inside, so that's where he could be a good player for us and I thought as the game went along for us, he did a much better job. ... I thought his wingers had a tough time tonight, but like I said, he picked it up tonight and did a good job for us."

‘Pretty average’ night from Rask

A quick look at the final box score tells the story of a rough night in net for Tuukka Rask, who finished the evening with an .821 save percentage after surrendering five goals on 28 shots against Tampa Bay.

But Boston’s netminder didn’t get much help from the defense in front of him, with a Lightning offense averaging 3.90 goals per game earning a number of Grade-A looks and odd-man rushes against Rask thanks to faulty coverage or over-aggressive B’s blueliners.

Let’s take a look at Boston’s defensive structure, or lack thereof, during Tampa’s tallies on Monday night.

(Leaving Steven Stamkos alone in his office for a pair of one-timers is going to cost you, big time.)



(A breakaway chance for Stamkos is already bad news for the Bruins. The fact that Victor Hedman was the next trailing skater on the sequence instead of a backchecking Bruin? Woooof.)





(A 2-on-1 chance for the Lightning, or a clean shooting lane for 121-point scorer Nikita Kucherov? Pick your poison.)



Aside from Anthony Cirelli’s go-ahead goal in the final minute of play — a one-time shot from the slot — it’s hard to harp too much on with Rask’s overall play on Monday, considering a likely Vezina favorite down the other end of the ice in Andrei Vasilevskiy also relinquished four goals on just 17 shots against.

Still, Cassidy took Rask to task postgame with some tough love.

"Pretty average,” Cassidy said of Rask’s night. “Listen, he got beat by good shots. But at some point, you need a save. You hope the last one, obviously in the last minute. But we didn't get it. So we move on."

Now, Cassidy didn’t just single out his goalie on a night in which Boston’s D corps made a number of brutal split-second decisions against a club that can bury you in short order. But still, if we’re looking for players to blame after this one, I’d put Rask far below some of the bodies in front of him.

“Poor decisions,” Cassidy said of the third-period breakdowns. “Step up on the rush, let their best players behind us when you have a lead. I can understand if you're behind and you're pressing, those things happen. It should never happen.

“Our D jumped up on the rush,” Cassidy added when asked about Hedman’s goal. “Listen, we had a chance to put the game away. We're off net with our chance. We've got to hustle back and I think we just, the lone D back there just made a poor decision. He's got to bide time for people to recover. That gave them life, unfortunately, but there was still a lot of hockey after that to put it away and we didn't get the job done."

Penalty kill stepping up

For as much as Boston’s power-play success (3rd in NHL - 26.1% success rate) headlines the Bruins’ special-teams play, the club’s penalty kill is going to be perhaps the most valuable unit going into the postseason, especially against opponents such as Toronto and Tampa Bay which rank seventh and first, respectively, on the man advantage.

While Boston’s penalty kill currently ranks 10th in the league with a success rate of 81.5 percent, Cassidy and his staff were encouraged by Monday’s showing — in which the unit shut down Tampa on all six of its power-play bids.

In what every well seemed like the turning point of the game at the time, Boston’s PK stood tall midway through the third after Pastrnak was whistled for a double-minor — with regulars like Zdeno Chara, Brandon Carlo and even new additions like Connor Clifton making things difficult for Tampa Bay’s big guns during the extended stretch of 5v4 play. By the time Pastrnak was released from the sin bin, Tampa had failed to land a single shot on net against Rask.

While Boston will be without one of its regular PK options in Sean Kuraly for at least another three weeks, a potential return for Kevan Miller this weekend will add some extra snarl to a special-teams squad that should be tested early and often over the coming weeks.

“I think we were aggressive up ice,” Cassidy said of his PK. “Trying to disrupt their entries, make them earn their puck possessions, because when they have it, they're good. So if you can limit that and we did, that was the game plan going in. Make it hard on entries and then try to deny certain plays. And sometimes you're able to do that, sometimes you're not. But I think it was more of the initial entry, they had to expend energy and time to get into the zone, and that was half the battle."