In an unmistakable sign of this team’s consistent resilience and strength up and down the lineup, David Pastrnak returned to the Bruins lineup after being injured for the previous five games and the B’s won without any kind of major goal-scoring contribution from their star player.
The Bruins reconfigured their forward lines and essentially had No. 88 in a third-line role playing with Fraser Minten and Marat Khusnutdinov while getting contributions from different places in a solid 5-2 win over the Blues at the Enterprise Center on Tuesday night.
The victory maintains the B’s spot in a first-place tie with the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Atlantic Division and improves things to a modest three-game winning streak, a stretch that’s impressive given that most of it happened without Pastrnak or Charlie McAvoy in the lineup.
Tuesday night’s road triumph was a win based largely on hunches from head coach Marco Sturm that Tanner Jeannot and Mark Kastelic would embrace dropping to the fourth line while keeping together top forward lines of Morgan Geekie/Elias Lindholm/Alex Steeves and Viktor Arvidsson/Pavel Zacha/Casey Mittelstadt, and his players followed through with a teamwide effort that further stamps them as a tight, indivisible unit.
“Obviously with David coming back, it’s a good problem to hav,e but we had to think about that one a little bit,” said Sturm. “How we ended up is we felt like that would give us the best chance to win. We didn’t want to touch Lindholm line because we felt like [Alex Steeves] has done a really good job, and we didn’t want to touch [Pavel Zacha’s] line…so there we go.
“For me, it’s all about character. That’s what we have in this room. Some guys had to go down a line and they didn’t complain at all. They just got the job done just like [Kastelic] and [Jeannot]. That’s what good teams do. They don’t complain [about things], they just go to work.”
It didn’t start that way, of course, as the Bruins took half of the first period to get their footing, but the energy levels and on-ice chemistry began to come together in the second half of the opening period. The Bruins also put their work boots on and scored a couple of good, old-fashioned blue-collar goals rather than the nifty play-making scores that are usually the byproduct of Pastrnak’s creativity and game-breaking abilities.
Instead, it was Minten shoveling home a third effort goal after scoring attempts at the net by Pastrnak and Khusnutdinov, and then Kastelic getting a puck bounce off him at the crease after Sean Kuraly initially tipped a Victor Soderstrom point shot. They were both no-frills, hard-working goals where all the Bruins players were paying the price for offense instead of hanging out on the perimeter.
The game-winner in the third period was a similar variety as Nikita Zadorov threw a puck to the net and it bounced off Kuraly’s body before Kastelic slammed it home once the puck landed in the crease. Minten’s second goal was a nifty spinning one-timer hammered at the net, but all of them prior to Zacha’s empty net score were about getting pucks to the slot and net front area with a lot of force and will.
“I love playing with [Kuraly]. Very effective and simple, and a good communicator out there,” said Kastelic. “Me and Tanner, we just continued to try and do our thing. Our style of game really compliments anybody, so I think it was kind of straightaway and fun playing.
“I try to take pride in getting [to the net] and getting in front of the goalie and get dirty ones like you saw tonight. I’m just trying to always improve in that area and get tips and stuff. Our whole line has the ability to get to the front of the net, so it’s kind of fun to play that way.”
This all allowed Pastrnak an opportunity to casually slide into the lineup and collect a pair of assists with Minten enjoying the big scoring night on that line. Pastrnak finished with three helpers and a plus-2 in 15:36 of ice time, had seven shot attempts and only had a couple of PP opportunities on a night without a lot of penalties.
In other words, it was a good first game back after an absence to get back into the flow of things with the Black and Gold.
“I felt good. I felt confident and saw the ice well today,” said Pastrnak. “It was good to be back. We were just three young kids playing together…it was fun. We already had a couple of looks together early in the season, so we were comfortable together even though it was no practice together.
“Kuzy is such a fast skater and so strong on the puck for a player his size, and Minten is already so mature and such a good 200-foot player for somebody his age. It’s actually amazing to see. I knew what to expect from them and it was about trying to make them comfortable. Minten was getting rewarded with great positioning on both goals, so it was really fun to see.”
The Bruins continue to be a team that’s defied conventional thinking headed into this season as they’re sitting eighth in the NHL with 3.19 goals per game, and generating offense has not been an issue with or without their best players in the lineup. Some might still wonder if it’s sustainable for the entirety of the season for the Bruins, but at this point they are just 10 games from the halfway mark, and it’s time to realize this is who the B’s are this season, rather than a favorable stretch or a good run while everybody is hot offensively or healthy.