Sixteen minutes and 19 seconds of time on ice. Three shots on goal. A minus-2 rating. Zero assists. Zero goals.
The final line on Jake DeBrusk’s night during Thursday’s loss to the Colorado Avalanche was anything but remarkable.
Although, to be fair, the 22-year-old winger did offer a retort to what was a frustrating night in Denver.
“Well, I scored and had an assist tonight,” he remarked.
He’s not wrong.
For as much as Boston’s second line of David Krejci, Karson Kuhlman and DeBrusk has labored this season when it comes to generating quality looks in the O-zone, the top-six unit did manage to land some punches against the Avs.
Using his wheels to snag a whiffed puck away from Cale Makar, DeBrusk turned a failed clearing attempt for Colorado into a scoring chance for Boston — bringing the biscuit down low and feeding Kuhlman for a snipe in the early minutes of the second period.
https://twitter.com/ConorRyan_93/status/1182478777642823680
In the following stanza, DeBrusk cashed in on the B’s power play — rifling the puck past Philipp Grubauer off of a slick, no-look feed from David Pastrnak for his second point of the night.
https://twitter.com/emarinofsky/status/1182492318819082245
Well, he had two points on the scorebook for at least a minute or two. The problem?
A pair of video-review challenges from the Avalanche left DeBrusk with a goose egg on the box score — as Kuhlman's tally was negated off of a goaltender-interference call against Krejci, while Pastrnak was ruled offside on the power-play strike (albeit far before Boston generated the scoring chance).
For both a player in DeBrusk and a second line that has struggled to rack up points in the early going, the breaks that went Colorado's way were just par for the course in what has been a miserable start for a crucial forward group.
"Of course (it's frustrating)," DeBrusk said. "Any time that you get production finally and it gets taken away from you twice, it's just one of those things where almost you don't believe it — but at the same time, that's how it's going for me. ... We should have won this game, 4-2. Honestly, those weren't goals, I guess. One was offside and goaltender interference. They looked at it and called it as it was. I don't think it's gonna snowball, but it's definitely pissing me off, for sure."
With the points that DeBrusk and his linemates were able to generate negated upon a closer look, the third-year forward had little to show for when it comes to puck-possession metrics for the remainder of the night.
In total, the DeBrusk-Krejci-Kuhlman line was only able to create two scoring chances and zero high-danger looks in the 10:40 of 5v5 TOI that it was deployed on Thursday. During that same stretch, the Avalanche generated eight scoring chances — five of those tabbed as high-danger opportunities.
Creating Grade-A looks around the opposing goal has rarely been an issue for a playmaking pivot in Krejci and a tenacious winger with a nose for the net like DeBrusk, but the numbers have been ghastly to start this season.
So far in 2019-20, both Krejci and DeBrusk have been out on the ice together for 36:07 of 5v5 TOI. And during that time:
- Boston has been outscored, 1-0.
- Boston has been outshot, 25-14.
- Opponents have led in scoring chances, 23-10.
- Opponents hold a commanding 13-1 edge in high-danger scoring chances.