The Bruins are all too familiar with the PK structure that the Ottawa Senators rolled out on Saturday. After all, they spent over two weeks trying to crack it last April in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Okay, it wasn’t the cellar-dwelling Senators. But the PK strategy deployed last year by the Maple Leafs carried over to Toronto’s fellow Ontario-based club this season — given that new Sens head coach D.J. Smith served as an assistant coach with the Leafs for four seasons.
That conservative PK formation is often most effective when it’s stacking bodies in the slot — taking away the opposing power-play unit’s man at the bumper while preventing crisp seam passes.
Boston found a way to capitalize against the Leafs last spring, but what if the B’s man advantage was unable to even get into the offensive zone?
It’s a task easier said than done with the likes of David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand and others out on the ice, but Ottawa did what it could to slow down the B’s by stacking the blue line with skaters — hoping to disrupt clean entries into the Sens’ side of the ice.
It’s a sound strategy, unless you have the personnel to make the PK pay.
“When they hold the line – we saw it in the second period, right? It can be effective for them; when you can’t get in, it’s frustrating,” Bruce Cassidy said. “And we couldn’t get through it in the second period – a little bit stubborn. But, when you do, to me it’s a bit like a blitz. If you get by it when they’re stiffing the blue line, then you’ve got opportunities to get a high-end play off on the rush.”
Down a skater just 46 seconds into Saturday’s matchup, the Senators braced themselves along the blue line as Torey Krug gained steam with the puck on his stick. But rather than skate into the mass of Ottawa skaters, Krug “blitzed” — putting Ottawa on its heels thanks to a little help from the familiar confines of TD Garden.
Before he was even out of Boston’s zone, Krug uncorked a blast that sailed past the line of Senators PKers and ricocheted off the end boards to Craig Anderson’s left. Before Ottawa had the time to react and clear the biscuit out of danger, a perfectly timed Pastrnak had already corralled it in the slot.
A couple of dekes later — and it was 1-0 Boston.
(Photo by Steve Babineau/NHLI via Getty Images)
Bruins
A vigilant pre-scout and Torey Krug’s playmaking prowess is giving Bruins’ power play a ‘blitz’ option
“We got a good bounce off the end wall; the timing then has always been good,” Cassidy said. “(David Krejci) has done it on the other side on his forehand last year when Bergy was out, throwing it through to Marchy on the other side. So, it’s definitely in the playbook.
“How often you use it kind of depends on how stiff teams are defending the playoffs. We tried it with St. Louis with not as much success, but they’re another team that does that. So, it’s situational for what the other team is doing at their blue line.”
Cassidy and his staff’s efforts when it came to pre-scouting the opposing kill paid off on Saturday, but the highlight-reel tally was far from the only time that Krug and Pastrnak have teamed up on such a set play.
Back on January 3, Boston faced a similar PK in the Calgary Flames, with four skaters backing off of the puck carrier in Krug to get into position. The sequence followed the same exact script, with the B’s defenseman firing one in from Boston’s zone and setting up Pastrnak for a clean look off of a nifty bank pass.
“It was a set play,” Pastrnak said. “I think we scored on it once last year. You could see later in the game we had it tough. We know they’re good on the initial breakout on the penalty kill, so we tried to catch them standing still on the blue line. ...
Torey has been so good at putting it in the right spot to catch it and get a nice breakaway from it.”
Will this move on the man advantage become as much of a staple as Pastrnak’s patented left-circle bomb? Of course not.
But for a Bruins power play that thrives due its adaptability (or rather, unpredictability — from the opponents' perspective), Krug’s ability to get a stout line of skaters scrambling off of a quick-thinking bank pass stands as just another reason why Boston’s power play has such an established track record of eviscerating whatever the opposition throws at it.
"Torey is an extremely smart, sees the ice really well and is obviously a very talented playmaker. One of the best in the league on defense,”Marchand said. “So it's chemistry, they've been able to build over the last few years, playing together. It showed again there. They've connected on that a few times. It's a good play when the D — it's tough, because the forwards and the D have to try to gap up on Pasta, he blows by you. It's a good play to break out every now and then."
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