One of the keys to a successful NHL season is a team’s ability to make in-season adjustments based on the way things are going, and it certainly highlights a coaching staff with a finger on the pulse of what they are seeing on the ice.
Some of it is about the entire Bruins team getting more attuned to the new hybrid zone/man-to-man defense they are incorporating in the defensive zone. But it also feels pretty clear that the Bruins made some adjustments this week based on what they’d seen through the first 10 or so games this season, and those tweaks are making a big difference in improved all-around play. The biggest change has been on the back end where Charlie McAvoy and Nikita Zadorov have been used more as a big top pair of defensemen, and both players have responded, with McAvoy, in particular, playing his best hockey of the season.
“They’re playing against the top players every night and they are just playing it simple,” said Marco Sturm. “Sometimes both of them want to do extra and want to do something special because they want to get the guys going, and they want to win.
“But ‘no’, it’s concentrating on shutting those top players down. That’s all that we want [from them] and that’s all that they’re doing it right now.”
McAvoy has racked up four assists in those three games, has been a plus player and hasn’t played less than 24 minutes after racking up a season-low 17:23 of ice time in this week’s dreadful loss to the Ottawa Senators.
“[Zadorov] is just strong, man…there’s so many times I look at him during a game [and think] this is just a man’s game,” said McAvoy. “He’s just able to physically dominate guys during the game, which I think is just his superpower. He has size and uses it in such a [good] way. It’s trust that I need to be in the right spot for him and the same with me.
“He gets his juices flowing when he gets to play against the best guys on the other team and it’s the same with me. We get excited at that opportunity to shut guys down and the responsibility that goes along with playing that role.”
The numbers for the 30-year-old Zadorov haven’t been off-the-charts in the three-game stretch, but he’s played physical, intimidating defense with the occasional bursts of offensive creativity and puck-moving that has long been his playing style. Together, they have given the B’s something to build around defensively that’s seen them allow just six goals in the last three games, a far cry from the unsustainable 3.43 goals allowed per game this season that has Boston currently ranked 25th in the NHL.
Those moves have also coincided with a string of healthy scratches for Mason Lohrei with 26-year-old Jonathan Aspirot having been slotted into the lineup as a strong, solid bottom-pair D-man that keeps things very simple on the back end. Lohrei had been playing mostly with McAvoy in the early going, but the mistakes and simple turnovers in their own end were badly hurting the Bruins, and quite honestly taking McAvoy away from playing his full game.
“The way we want to play in our end fits him perfectly. He closes, has a good quick, has a good stick and he solves a lot of problems in our end,” said Sturm. “As a forward they must love it who can close right away, I think it’s a plus. That’s what he is never in trouble. I am going to watch the game again tomorrow and I will guarantee you there is not going to be a lot of time [where he is in trouble]. If you don’t [close quickly] then you get stuck into your end and then here we go. That is why he stays out of trouble.
“[Mason Lohrei] should be pissed. He should be very pissed. He works really hard in practice, he’s ready and he just waits for his opportunity,” added Sturm prior to Saturday’s game about Lohrei sitting out each of the last three games. “But I think that is the goal is to have him be a little different when he goes back out there. Watching from upstairs and watching some other players what they do well and what they do wrong too. When it’s his turn [to play again], we hope he does well too.”
Clearly Lohrei will get back in there again at some point, but there is zero reason to tinker with a defensive corps that played a textbook defensive game against a solid Carolina team on Saturday afternoon.
ONE TIMERS
• Morgan Geekie had a six-game goal-scoring streak snapped in Saturday’s win over the Hurricanes, but he’s still among the NHL leaders in goals this season after topping 30 lamplighters for the first time last season. The big winger has the kind of quick release and heavy shot that’s never really going to go into a slump as long as he keeps shooting the puck, and has his own Bruins teammates believing that he’s just scratching the surface of what he can do at the NHL level.
“He has everything to score 50 in this league. I keep telling him, keep reminding him, he has a heck of a shot, and he has the goal-scoring instincts. He is going to get it one day,” said David Pastrnak, who knows a thing or two about getting to the 50-goal mark at the NHL level. “The shot that he has it’s amazing. It’s the best on our team. We just need to get him the opportunities and keep reminding him to shoot more.”
It's high praise for a 27-year-old that’s just coming into his own after being cut loose by the Seattle Kraken organization a couple of years ago and is looking like a tremendous bargain for the Bruins as he’s showing that last season’s 33 goals and 57 points is hardly an aberration or outlier for the rugged forward.
Geekie has become a player who doesn’t really hesitate when he gets the puck in a shooting area and will be direct with shots to the net when that’s the right play to be made. It’s something that Marco Sturm has been preaching to create rebounds and chaos around the other team’s net that could and should lead to other goals for the Bruins.
“He was one of those guys who, let’s face it, he was looking for Pasta [to pass to] all the time. And I always told him, ‘Be selfish.’ Because he’s a goal scorer. He’s gotten better at it,” said Sturm. “He already got better, much better. Even on the power play, you can see he’s not looking around anymore…That’s being selfish, but in a good way. That is what we want him to be because he has the quickest release, I think, on this team. We want him to use that more.”
• Tough break for Haverhill native and Bruins defenseman Jordan Harris, who played well as the seventh defenseman and showed that he’s going to bring some increased D-man depth to the B’s this season when he’s healthy. For now, though, he’s going to be out a couple of months after undergoing surgery for a right ankle that was deemed an “open reduction and internal fixation procedure” undergone at Mass General Brigham.
This might be a stupid question, but doesn’t just about every surgery ever performed serve as an “internal fixation procedure” when it’s really said and done?
• Congrats to Hampus Lindholm and his fiancée, Amanda, on the birth of their first child, a baby girl, this past week, which coincided with his return to the Bruins lineup.