Is it time to be a wee bit concerned about the offense for the Boston Bruins amidst a very light preseason body of work?
The Bruins finished off their exhibition season with a 2-0 loss to the Washington Capitals on Saturday night at Capital One Arena where Boston admittedly didn’t bring their full varsity crew while calling up youngsters like Fabian Lysell, Georgii Merkulov and Riley Duran for one last look ahead of the season. The Bruins finished with a 2-4-1 record in their seven exhibition games and scored a paltry 15 goals in the 7 games, including Saturday’s effort where they managed just two shots on net in the first period and not much more consistently after that against a near full Capitals lineup.
For a team that averaged just 2.38 goals per game in the playoffs and lost talented game-breaker Jake DeBrusk to free agency this summer, there are some trouble signs for the Bruins.
The good news was that the Black and Gold looked their best in a 4-1 home preseason win over the Flyers last week that featured a lineup very close to what things will look like on opening night, and that should give everybody hope that things are going to be okay offensively once stuff gets real.
Still, the Bruins struggled to generate offense pretty consistently during the preseason and had some difficulty finishing off plays even when they did enjoy good puck possession. Some of that was having key guys like Brad Marchand, Elias Lindholm and Matt Poitras shuttling in and out of the lineup due to different injury situations, but is there something beyond that for Jim Montgomery to be worried about at this point?
“I think you’re always worried about scoring,” said Montgomery. “Two years ago, I was concerned about scoring. Last year there was concern about scoring. I think our D corps gives us the ability to spend more time in the offensive zone this year. If you look at the teams that spend more time in the offensive zone, they end up being teams that score a lot.
“That’s an area that we focus a lot: Spend more time in the offensive zone and less time in the D-zone. I can’t say I’m worried about [our goal-scoring]. Right now, it’s not a concern.”
It may not be a concern now but check back in a couple of weeks if things don’t markedly improve during the regular season and show that Boston’s offense has at least taken a half-step forward from last season’s inconsistent offense-producing crew.
ONE-TIMERS
*Count Montgomery among the hockey people who believe the NHL could cut back on the number of preseason games in the near future from the 7-8 exhibition games played by many of the teams across the league. It becomes a talking point every preseason, but perhaps even more so this year with the number of injuries suffered during the preseason as teams are playing out the preseason string.
“I think the number is probably around four [preseason games],” said Montgomery when estimating the total needed to get ready for the season. “There are a lot of elements that go into it that are above my pay grade. There’s revenue to think about and there’s young players that need the exposure, the ones that may be going back to junior, and it’s also good for us to see the players that might be playing the American League, and see them in different roles, as we get to know them, that could help us if they get called up during the season.”
To that end, it was no surprise that guys like Patrick Brown, Duran, Brett Harrison, Lysell, Merkulov, Jaxon Nelson, Michael Callahan and Jackson Edward were called back up to get late looks before they’ll again head down to Providence for the upcoming American League season.
*Jiri Patera was still wearing his Vancouver Canucks goalie pads when he made his Bruins practice debut this week after getting the word in Abbotsford that he’d been claimed on waivers by the Black and Gold. The Czech-born Patera doesn’t have a ton of knowledge when it comes to the guys on the B’s roster aside from skating in Czech at times with David Pastrnak and Pavel Zacha and doing the same with Morgan Geekie in Western Canada over the last couple of summers.
But the 25-year-old netminder is looking forward to picking Bob Essensa’s brain and getting acquainted with a B’s organization that has consistently gotten the most from their goalies for decades.
“I’m really happy to be here,” said Patera. “My plan is to go day-to-day, impress the coaches and make the starting day roster. [Goalie Bob] said to have fun out there and just bring my best that I have.
“I’ve heard a lot of good things about [Bob Essensa] and just working with him I think is going to make me a better goalie. So I am really looking forward to it.”
Patera may very simply be a Brandon Bussi replacement in Providence should the Jeremy Swayman saga continue to play out into the regular season, but he’s also a guy who’s played eight games, all with the Vegas Golden Knights, at the NHL level with a 3-3-1 record and a .902 save percentage to this point in his career.
*The Amazon “Faceoff” series chronicling last season’s playoffs has been excellent and this humble hockey writer is just one episode in where a lot of the ep centered on the longtime friendship between William Nylander and David Pastrnak.
Watched the first episode last night with Finn. Good, good stuff 👍 https://t.co/EfQoaIPfrQ
— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) October 5, 2024
I can’t wait to get to the one where Swayman is, once again, publicly whining about the unpleasant arbitration experience last summer that he initiated with the Bruins.
“Hearing you’re not worthy of what you think you’re worthy of, that was hard to hear,” said Swayman on the Amazon series. “You don’t forget what was said. I wrote them down and I looked at them the other day. And I had a couple of checkmarks. My biggest knock was how I wasn’t trustworthy in the playoffs. Check.”
Full credit to Swayman for using a perceived slight as fuel for an excellent performance last season and a dominant playoff for the Black and Gold, but you really get the feeling he is someday going to regret how dramatic he’s been about this arbitration thing. It’s a big factor in the adversarial way his current contract negotiations have played out with the Bruins, and it’s going to have a lasting impact on the way he is perceived by fans, media and his peers alike.
You have to hope he is ready for what might be coming if he struggles once he does eventually sign with the Bruins, because the honeymoon will definitely be over with a lot of Bruins fans that have been critical of the things Swayman has been saying during a negotiation that’s sure become acrimonious.