When it rains, it pours — and when Torey Krug’s backhand feed was gobbled up by Connor Brown and subsequently lofted back into the Bruins’ zone — it seemed to fall right in line with what has been an arduous couple of games for the B’s defensemen.
Through the first five games of Boston’s best-of-seven series with the Toronto Maple Leafs, Krug has largely been held in check — limited to three assists (all secondary helpers) while only landing four shots on goal during 81:15 of 5v5 play.
Krug’s giveaway to Brown on Sunday afternoon — seconds after going end to end and breaking back into the Leafs’ zone on Boston’s second power play of the night — had the right intention when it came to its target.
For most of the 2018-19 season, the Bruins’ third-ranked power play has relied on two key cogs in Grade-A areas to keep it humming at an effective rate — Patrice Bergeron at the “bumper” and David Pastrnak awaiting one-timers from the left circle.
Both options have been mainstays in Boston’s point of attack on the man advantage, something that Mike Babcock and the Leafs have clearly taken note of. As has been the case for most of this series, the Leafs are more than willing to surrender the blue line during an extended stretch of zone time for the Bruins — opting instead to pack bodies in at the slot and take away soft areas of the ice.
Krug’s backhand attempted to find Bergeron setting up in his regular position at the high slot, but Toronto was not going to let Boston’s man in the middle beat them at special teams in Game 6.
By the time Boston managed to get the puck back over the blue line for another attempt against Frederik Andersen, the Leafs were back in position, with Ron Hainsey, Mitch Marner and Zach Hyman all hovering around No. 37 — ready to snuff out any puck heading his way while preventing any seam feeds from slipping across the slot to a lurking Pastrnak.
(The Leafs have made it evident, send the puck into the slot at your own risk on the power play).
Two of the Bruins’ main drivers on the man advantage might have neutralized by Babcock’s conservative structure around the slot.
But if you give a player like Krug space to work with — sooner or later you’re going to pay.
"Yeah, someone has to shoot,” Bruce Cassidy said of Boston’s strategy on the power play. “If you've follow us, you kinda know what our sequence of plays are. Bumper, Pasta, if they're going to take those off, then Marchy's got to shoot sometimes, we're going to attack at the goal line. Marcus in this case tonight, we talked about that if we had another power play, that he would think about that, get it up top and shoot with traffic. So if they're going to be compact, you really have to shoot and recover."
If Toronto wasn’t going to let anything through the slot or at the bumper, perhaps a simple shot would lead to a fracas down low.
As seen below, with Marner, Hainsey and Hyman all shadowing Bergeron and parking in front of Marchand at the high slot, Boston was going to have to make do with the ice afforded to it.
Rather than send a quick cross-slot feed through to Pastrnak, Marchand instead circumvented Toronto’s logjam by making the safe play over to his fellow winger at the left circle, who opted to throw one in front to see what kind of scoring bid it would create.
The puck skittered to Andersen’s left along the boards — but with Hyman tied up down low with Bergeron — the biscuit hit the stick of Krug right way, with the defenseman slotted down along the halfwall for a potential rebound offering.
The defenseman didn’t miss, uncorking one past Andersen’s shoulder to give Boston a 2-1 lead.
Torey Krug rips it home on the power play.
2-1 game. pic.twitter.com/Ns6lt3lHdu
— Conor Ryan (@ConorRyan_93) April 21, 2019
