Fighting predictability, ‘possession over position’ and other early lessons learned for a reworked Bruins power play

It was a familiar narrative that we saw play out on the Garden ice Saturday night. 

Trailing by a goal in the closing minutes of the third period, the Bruins turned to their lethal power-play unit in search of an equalizer. And, par for the course, it delivered — with Charlie McAvoy tapping a crisp feed from Brad Marchand into twine to force overtime en route to an eventual shootout victory over the Panthers.

Given both the established track record of Boston’s man advantage — coupled with the personnel stapled to that unit — it’s almost to be expected that Boston’s power play will cap off a 5v4 sequence by lighting the lamp. 

And yet, while Saturday’s win served as a refreshing reminder of the trump card Boston holds when its special-teams grouping is clicking, McAvoy’s backdoor strike has been more of an outlier this year than the expected status quo.

Even with McAvoy’s tally, the production from Boston’s power play so far in the 2021-22 season has been a far cry from its usual scoring output — ranking 23rd in the NHL with a 15.8% success rate. 

So, what gives?

It’s not as though the Bruins are missing key cogs on that top unit due to injury or offseason departures. In fact, the consensus seemed to be that the power play was poised to be even better this season — given the addition of Charlie McAvoy up at the blue line and Taylor Hall placed at the netfront.

So, what has been ailing this power-play unit through seven games — and are these early struggles just a blip or an ominous sign of more struggles ahead?

Here are four takeaways from what we’ve seen from Boston’s power play so far through three weeks of regular-season action.

Teams are taking away Boston’s top strength in Bergeron at the bumper

Many successful sequences on Boston’s man advantage tend to follow the same script — with crisp seam feeds out to the left circle getting rifled into netting by David Pastrnak. 

But in order for Boston’s power play to operate at its top capabilities, it usually requires Patrice Bergeron to serve as the conduit from his usual spot at the bumper — tasked with either ferrying those seam passes across the slot, extending O-zone possessions by battling for skittering pucks or snapping biscuits home. 

Few players are more effective in such a role on the man advantage. And unfortunately, opposing PK units are all more than aware of Bergeron’s power-play prowess at this point. 

As such, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that opponents have made a concerted effort to neutralize Bergeron at the bumper spot — usually by draping a number of skaters around the pivot in the slot.

Collapsing a PK structure into the slot does leave room for more movement up high and along the wall, but clogging up the slot and botting up Bergeron does stand as a pretty sound strategy when it comes to frustrating Boston’s power-play unit. 

(An example of a familiar PK strategy against Boston’s power play — this one from back in the 2019 playoff series against the Maple Leafs. As seen here, Toronto makes an effort to surround Bergeron and clog up the slot with three killers at the ready. Boston is still able to counter thanks to a Pastrnak shot and a subsequent rebound tally from Torey Krug, but that defensive structure does force Boston to usually opt for other routes in order to generate its Grade-A looks.)

So far, that PK strategy has been a familiar hurdle for the 2021-22 Bruins — forcing more movement in the aforementioned areas up high, along the half-wall and below the net. That’s all well and good if you have some entrenched regulars in place like Krug or David Krejci up high, but with guys like Charlie McAvoy and Taylor Hall still getting up to speed in their PP1 roles, it is making it a bit harder for Boston to switch gears in the O-zone when plays into Bergeron are getting taken away.

"Most teams would try to overplay Bergy in the bumper,” Bruce Cassidy said. “We've seen a lot of that, but then okay, so they're shrinking into the bumper, what's available on the outside? Is it the elbow to Pasta? Is it a down-low play and that's where we got to be clean with it. And then when you do identify that it might be an elbow shot because they're condensed in the middle, then it needs to be a clean pass from passer to the receiver.

“I think Charlie and Pasta haven't got the chemistry they had in the playoffs, maybe on that one-timer ... So a little cleaner with that if that's the option presented to us.”

Fighting predictability

When asked earlier this season about the toughest players to match up against on an opposing power play, Cassidy rolled through a list of the usual suspects — Connor McDavid, Alex Ovechkin, etc. — before eventually turning to Lightning winger Nikita Kucherov.

Of course, the former Hart Trophy winner can bury PK units thanks to his playmaking talent and accurate shot. But in Cassidy’s eyes, what makes Kucherov so deadly is his unpredictability thanks to his one-touch ability — and the skilled supporting cast around him.  

“He's a threat to shoot. He's a threat to go back post to (Alex) Killorn. He's a threat to put it into the bumper to (Brayden) Point, he's a threat to go through the seam to (Steven) Stamkos. All off of a one-touch,” Cassidy said of Kucherov. “He's unbelievable, how he can fake a one-timer shot and slow it down enough to get it into Brayden Point in the bumper.

 “That's one of, to me, the hardest thing to kill against that team — his one-touch ability is through the roof. … That's why I'm glad I do the power play and not the penalty kill. That's got to be a headache for every coach in the league every night to try to figure out what you're gonna do."

Granted, the Bruins have a pretty stacked grouping on that top power-play unit as well — with McAvoy up high, Bergeron in the bumper, Pastrnak at the left elbow, Marchand along the half-wall and Hall planted at the goal line. 

But unlike the Bolts (when operating at full strength with a healthy Kucherov), the Bruins have been plagued by stretches of predictable play in the O-zone that have usually made things easier on the penalty kill. 

Of course, “if it ain’t broke” is a regular mantra when it comes to an effective power play, but Cassidy is hoping that more reps will increase the likelihood of Boston’s big guns being able to find weak spots in a PK’s structure beyond just following the regular routine of seams through the slot and Bergeron directing traffic in the bumper. 

"I think the pace of our execution — in the zone, specifically, was slow and predictable, I found,” Cassidy said of the early issues plaguing the power play. “Whereas in the past I think we moved it quicker. Knew where our support was and recovered pucks and then broke a team down. ... That's how we've operated — quick puck movement, generate a play to the net, one of our options, from game to game you don't know which one that'll be, it sometimes depends on the killers, recovering a puck and now the team's broken down. Now our skill takes over.”

Some good, some bad with Charlie McAvoy up high

McAvoy may have assuaged some of the concerns on the man advantage thanks to his backdoor tally against the Panthers on Saturday, but the jury is still out a bit in terms of whether he’s the clear-cut best option on that top unit. 

While taking away Bergeron at the bumper might be a sound strategy against Boston’s power play, the Hurricanes might have mapped out the most lethal way to thwart the B’s thanks to their PK’s propensity to pressure puck carriers up high and force turnovers. There’s risk involved with such a home-run swing (especially if said puck carrier can funnel the puck down to Grade-A ice), but McAvoy’s execution and pace have sometimes left the B’s power play short-circuiting in the O-zone. 

(Some issues up high with McAvoy corralling the puck give Carolina the chance to pressure and push the puck out of the O-zone.)

Even though Matt Grzelcyk may not have the same offensive ceiling as his fellow BU D-man, you could make the argument that Grzelcyk/McAvoy swapping spots on PP1/PP2 could stand as a useful remedy if Boston continues to labor when it comes to maintaining prosperous O-zone possessions.

If first-touch playmaking is what Cassidy is looking for, especially up high, Grzelcyk’s skill set might be best catered to that top unit — especially when it comes to dealing with pressure. 

At this point, it seems like the Bruins aren’t seriously considering swapping the personnel on PP1, but if this shortage of production carries on into the coming weeks, Grzelcyk’s addition does seem like a logical tweak. 

'Possession Over Position' should be the mantra these days

The Bruins finally found some special-teams relief on Saturday thanks to McAvoy’s third-period equalizer — but the optics of how the B’s lit the lamp painted the picture of a power play that was all out of sorts. 

Sure, the Bruins pride themselves on being fluid with their roles on the power play, but a sequence in which McAvoy is available for a backdoor feed, Pastrnak is up at the point and Marchand is attacking on the left side isn’t exactly the first play that the B’s draw up when it comes set to set sequences on the power play.

But the Bruins will certainly take the end result. 

"It's funny, because it's not really how we script it,” McAvoy said of the tally. “I kind of said it right after. But one of the things Butch talked about is just ‘Possession over position.’ So we get the puck, and we're trying to make plays and that's kind of where the skill takes over.

“So I don't really know what I'm doing there backdoor, but it's kind of where I ended up — you know, Marshy is on that side, I'm on his side, Pasta's on the top. But that's kind of where we just trust each other and you just let the skill take over.”

It may not be the ideal sequence for the Bruins when it comes to executing on the power play, but with the B’s still looking to settle into a groove in the early going of the 2021-22 campaign, that “possession over position” mantra should be stressed again and again to help this special-teams grouping navigate through this hot-and-cold stretch.  

Sure, it's not exactly pretty. But as long as the Bruins are keeping the puck in the O-zone, the skill scattered across that group is inevitably going to get the better of most PK structures — especially if the B's are winning and recovering pucks along the way. 

“Marsh is attacking, so now you're just playing hockey, right? You're going to the net, like a rush play and there it was, we found the open guy, which would typically be Pasta — they end up switching,” Cassidy said of McAvoy’s goal.  So good for them. 

“Again, what we talked about, let your hockey sense take over once you recover a puck. We've always encouraged that and it worked out last night. ... And I think you'll just see more of it, the more we initiate the first shot and are able to recover."