Ryan: Reports of Patrice Bergeron’s decline have been greatly exaggerated

When it came to organizing a gameplan for grinding Boston’s power play to a halt, Red Wings head coach Jeff Blashill didn’t turn to the stats page on his NHL phone app for guidance.

The Detroit bench boss wasn’t preoccupied with whatever baseline numbers one might glean from the first three weeks of the 2021-22 campaign. 

Had he done such a thing, perhaps he wouldn’t have focused on Patrice Bergeron as a potential threat from his usual power-play position at the bumper. 

Because even though Bergeron has carved out quite the reputation as a proven offensive conduit from his perch in the slot — puck luck hasn't been on the Bruins captain’s side to open the new year. 

Through seven games, Bergeron had yet to find the back of the net — a stark departure from his usual propensity to stuff the stat sheet. 

And while the 36-year-old forward’s slow start to the 2021-22 season (at least in the O-zone) might have caused the heartbeat of the collective B’s fandom to skip once or twice in fear of a decline, Blashill wasn’t getting caught up in such discourse.

Sure, Bergeron had yet to light the lamp entering Thursday’s meeting at TD Garden — but the Red Wings weren’t about to let the future Hall of Famer move around unchecked in the slot during power-play opportunities. 

Well, at least that was the plan going into the night. 

"We went over it lots before,” Blashill said postgame about accounting for Bergeron in the bumper. “I know (assistant coach Doug Houda) went over it pretty heavy about what the assignments were, but we missed an assignment twice.”

Of course, it’s one thing to brace oneself for a player via prescout and film review — and it’s an entirely different animal when it comes to stopping that same force out on the ice in a game setting. 

And on the ice Thursday night, Blashill, the Red Wings and thousands of relieved Bruins fans saw the Bergeron that — as he’s done for close to two decades in this league — can decimate the competition in more ways than one.

Whether it be Detroit’s ill-fated decision to divert skaters over to David Pastrnak to take away his howitzer at the left circle — or a number of D-zone lapses that allowed Bergeron to skate unfettered around his office in the slot — Bergeron buried Detroit from the bumper on Thursday night, recording his second career four-goal game en route to a 5-1 win.

The first three tallies came on the power play, and all followed a pretty similar script, with Bergeron rifling pucks home from the slot off of crisp feeds from his linemate in Brad Marchand. It was a welcome sight — not just for a B’s power play that entered the night with a sub-standard 15.8% success rate — but also for a player that had yet to be rewarded in Bergeron. 

But for as much as some fans and media fretted over Bergeron’s dearth of O-zone production and prematurely read the tea leaves regarding a drop-off in play — the Bruins themselves weren’t panicking over Bergeron’s baseline stats, or lack thereof.

"It's a matter of time,” Marchand said. “I mean, he's such a dominant player in the league and he's had a lot of good looks early on. It's just sometimes they go in and sometimes they don't. Everything he touched tonight went in.

“So for him, it's just a matter of time and when he gets on a roll, he really gets on a roll. But you can't just look at that for his game. He's such a tough player to play against all around the ice and does so many good things defensively on the PK and 5v5.”

Aside from Bergeron’s offensive salvo — capped off with his third-period snipe at 15:52 — the franchise pivot put together a stat line that B’s fans have become accustomed to viewing over the years.

2:40 of shorthanded ice time.
7 total shot attempts.
16-of-19 at the faceoff dot.
36 years old.
1,151 games played. 

Truly something. 

For a veteran like Bergeron who has faced far more challenges in his career than a seven-game scoring drought, the proper counter against any sort of frustration was to simply strip his game back down to basics. 

"Honestly, I think it’s one of those things where I have been in the league long enough to know it’s going to come back, right? So I think I have the experience that I can rely on,” Bergeron said. “I think it's about making sure you don't force plays, or you don't try to think about the end result. But really go back to the details and make sure you play the right way and put yourself in a good position. Eventually, it's going to come your way.”

He added: “Maybe the last three games, were a little more to the outside. We were too spread out as a line. Before that, I thought we were creating a lot. Maybe I wasn't getting the goals, but we were still creating some things and getting some wins as well.”

To Bergeron’s point — even though a big ol’ goose egg in the goals column is tough to ignore for some B’s fans — his sentiment regarding the chances Boston has been able to generate when he’s been on the ice holds plenty of merits. 

Entering Thursday night, there was only one other forward trio (Tampa’s Maroon-Colton-Perry line) that boasted a greater expected goals percentage than the Marchand-Bergeron-Pastrnak line at 66.1% (per MoneyPuck) — a testament to the number of quality chances that Boston has been able to create when they’ve been out on the ice.

Of course, there’s a bit of a gap between expected goals (the Bergeron line held a 3.7 - 1.9 edge in expected goals in 5v5 play), and the rebounds, second chances and puck luck that lead to tangible goals. But Bergeron and the Bruins were still buoyed by the fact that their top line was controlling play during a majority of their shifts. 

Sooner or later, that tangible production was primed to break out — and it came at the expense of an inexperienced Detroit club. 

Bergeron will face far more daunting foes in the coming months than a rebuilding Red Wings roster. And even with his top-flight talents, the toll of 18 NHL seasons continues to erode a body that has trudged through a car-crash case of injuries.  

Eventually, the fears that sprouted up among Bruins fans this summer — and carried over into October — will come to fruition. 

Eventually, Boston’s captain will need to hang up his skates — his body finally giving out after putting it on the line time and time again for the only NHL club he’s ever played for. 

And while that day of reckoning looms on the horizon, Thursday’s two-way masterpiece should offer some hope that Bergeron — some way, somehow — still has a bit more left to give.

“Just because Bergy goes through a stretch where maybe he doesn't score as much as he used to, he's still so effective for our team and (he's the) heart and soul of our team,” Marchand said. “It was a matter of time before he has a night like he did tonight.