Ryan: Once Bruins' trump card, the Bergeron line has stalled at the worst possible time

As the final horn sounded at Scotiabank Arena and the Maple Leafs skaters spilled over the boards to celebrate taking a 2-1 series lead against the Bruins, David Pastrnak corralled the puck one more time in the high slot.

After his final two attempts were swallowed up by a diving Mitch Marner to close out the Leafs’ 3-2 win in Game 3 on Monday night, Pastrnak flung the biscuit down the other end of the sheet — a fitting conclusion in what was another frustrating night for the B’s winger.

The Leafs’ young core is another year older— and the addition of a 47-goal scorer in John Tavares certainly helps quite a bit — and yet, the Leafs have largely found themselves on the wrong end of betting odds going into their first-round rematch with the Bruins.

Why? A hefty amount of doubt lies in the Leafs’ shoddy track record when it’s come to shutting down Boston’s potent top line of Pastrnak, Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand.

During last spring’s seven-game victory over the Leafs, Mike Babcock’s club had few answers for Boston’s dynamic trio up front — with Bergeron and Co. combining for nine goals and an absurd 30 points.

But through three games this spring, the results have been largely underwhelming for Boston’s go-to options on offense. Together, Bergeron, Marchand and Pastrnak have combined for three goals and six total points — four of which have come on the man advantage.

While the Bergeron line’s primary matchup in John Tavares, Mitch Marner and Zach Hyman have only generated one 5v5 goal in over 25 minutes of 5v5 TOI when they’ve skated against No. 37 and his crew — those defensive efforts haven’t translated over to the other side of the sheet.



"I think it’s tight hockey on both sides,” Bergeron said postgame. “5-on-5 right now, we’ve got to find ways to create more. It’s a good matchup, but bottom line, you can’t really worry about that. It’s about competing and being at your best and bringing the best out of our line.”

If we cut out Bergeron, Marchand and Pastrnak’s production on the power play, the results are downright alarming when it comes to 5v5 play. In 35:28 of 5v5 TOI together this series, the Marchand-Bergeron-Pastrnak combination have been outshot, 20-17, while generating a whopping zero goals together.

That’s a startling drop off for a line that generated 3.51 goals scored per 60 minutes of play during the regular season — one made even more concerning when you look at how often Bruce Cassidy has deployed this group in favorable areas of the ice.

With a four-time Selke winner at the pivot and another established two-way forward to his left in Marchand, Boston’s top line has earned its title as one of the top trios in the entire NHL thanks to their ability to dominate on the scoresheet while also handling themselves outside of the O-zone.

During the regular season, the Bergeron line found themselves in the offensive zone on 61.28 percent of their faceoffs — a favorable total for a group that generated 260 combined points in 2018-19.

But so far this postseason, Cassidy has kept this crew in the O-zone for most of their shifts — with 75 percent of all of their faceoffs coming within the Leafs’ zone. In Game 3, while primarily matched up against the Tavares line, the 63-37-88 combination had 11 faceoffs in the O zone — and just one in their own area of the ice.

For as much as Cassidy titled the ice in favor of his big guns — they had zero goals to show for it, to go along with just seven shots against Frederik Andersen.

“(They’re) having a tougher time getting to the net,” Cassidy said of his top line. “As a result, I think they’re trying real hard, 1 on 1, to get there and I think they’ve got to use each other a little bit better and get an old-fashioned goal where there’s a center-lane drive, a puck to the net, a second chance.

“They’re pretty determined guys. They’ll find their way. But they’re against a pretty committed five-some right now, I find, to keeping them off the scoresheet. Again, that’s a lot of playoff hockey. So I do believe a second-chance goal is in their future if they start funneling pucks a little more.”

Indeed, there wasn’t a whole lot to take away from the Bergeron line in the offensive zone on Monday — with David Krejci’s line (one goal scored, plus-5 shot differential in 10:16 of 5v5 TOI) and Charlie Coyle providing the scoring on the night.

Pastrnak, who tallied 12 goals and 25 total points in his last 13 games against the Leafs entering the postseason, has largely stalled out when it comes to his usual production against Boston's Original Six foe.

After taking a heavy hit from Hyman in the closing minutes of the first period, Pastrnak only fired one more shot on goal for the rest of the night — while missing a couple of shifts on Boston’s top power-play unit in the immediate aftermath of the collision with the Leafs winger.



He tallied seven goals over his final 10 regular-season games after returning from thumb surgery, but Pastrnak is clearly still hampered at times when it comes to his puck handling — coughing up a number of pucks on zone entries or while setting up on the man advantage — while a number of other Grade-A looks have been uncharacteristically off the mark for the winger.

Even the usually stout Bergeron has shown some cracks over the course of this series, with the pivot out on the ice for both of the Leafs’ two tallies on the power play during Monday’s loss. Auston Matthews’ first goal of the postseason was a tough look in particular, as Bergeron lost a puck battle with Mitch Marner (who was once again the Leafs’ top forward on the ice) while attempting to chip it out of danger. In short order, the biscuit found its way to Andreas Johnsson and then Matthews, who tapped the offering past Tuukka Rask to make it a 2-1 game at the time.

“He got his stick on it,” Bergeron said of Marner. “I was trying to get it out, obviously. That’s a play I’ve got to make. I wasn't necessarily trying to get it out, I was trying to chip it. Brad was there, so just gotta make that play.”



With Boston in need of a bounce-back effort on Wednesday for Game 4, could Cassidy opt to break up his top line — slotting someone like Danton Heinen up top and dropping Pastrnak to the second line with Krejci?

“I don’t know if you’re always in a hurry to get away from something that’s kind of a see-saw battle,” Cassidy said of the Bergeron line and its efforts against Tavares. “We have to rely on our other depth guys to score. We got that in Game 2. Tonight we got a good goal from Krech. But if we feel that it’s really an impediment of us having success, then we’re going to get away from it and break up the line.

“We do it at times, we move Pasta around. … It’s two good lines going head to head every night. It’s going to tilt our way at some point. Our players are too good. “

Indeed, the 63-37-88 line is far too good to be bottled up all series long, especially against a D corps featuring the likes of Ron Hainsey and Nikita Zaitsev. But they’re starting to run out of time.

“We can be better,” Bergeron said. “That’s what the playoffs are all about. It’s about bringing your best and we’ve got to do that.”