If you missed it, David Krejci wishes he had gotten to play with David Pastrnak on his wing more often while he was in Boston. Krejci made a point to bring the topic up in a recent Czech interview with Miroslav Horak of iSport.cz while he was discussing this year’s Bruins team (which he follows closely) and, specifically, the recent move of Pastrnak to the second line.
Pastrnak and Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy have now responded to the comments, with Cassidy answering a question about it on Saturday and Pastrnak weighing in during his Zoom press conference on Monday. There are several angles to this worth addressing, but first let’s review what each of the three parties said.
Here are Krejci’s initial comments, as translated by Google. It needs to be noted that it is definitely possible -- probable, even -- for things to get lost in translation, as you can probably tell from some of the awkward words or phrases that pop up. So, consider this more of the gist of what Krejci said, and not a perfect translation.
“Coach Cassidy rarely let the two of us play together,” Krejci said. “It must have been him to split the first line and give Pasta to me. It was a maximum of two matches. After years, I leave Boston and suddenly it is possible. That stopped me. The coach always told me that he had no reason to take Pasta off the front line and that it would be as short as possible to dismantle the forces. I had to take it. But now Pasta has five or so many matches in the line with Hall and Haula. Strange.”
“Pasta and I were in agreement, I dare say that whenever we played together, it worked for us and it was useful for the team,” Krejci added. “Sometimes the coach put us on overtime or on four against four, the mutual chemistry was there right away, we scored goals. Now I'm just thinking that he could have taken Pasta out first for me and everything could have looked different. But that's the way it is, I don't blame the coach.”
Here was Cassidy’s response over the weekend. And I will note as someone who was on the Zoom that the first part of this was said more in a joking fashion than as a flippant response some have tried to make it out be.
“Yeah, well [Sean] Kuraly asked to play with Pastrnak. [Charlie] Coyle asked to play with Pastrnak. Riley Nash asked to play with Pastrnak. They all wanted to play with Pastrnak,” Cassidy said. “Who wouldn’t? I understand David’s point of view. He didn’t see him as much as he would’ve liked. I think at that particular time, that line was arguably the best in the National Hockey League.
“I think our team was going better offensively than it was two weeks ago when I made a decision. So I understand David’s point of view. Why wouldn’t he want to play with him, right? Other than that, at the time, we also felt David could drive a line no matter who his wingers were, and we saw some of that. I’m not sure Erik Haula’s in that position right now. There are differences as far as why we made the switch now versus years ago. Like I said, I respect David’s opinion. He was a great Bruin. We’re doing what we have to do for the team now, and hopefully it’s the right decision. We’ll see how it plays out.”
And here’s what Pastrnak said Monday about the idea of playing with his friend, role model and fellow Czech more:
“I didn’t really see the article, so I don’t know if the translation is correct. Obviously it was well known we were very close friends, and we always had chemistry together,” Pastrnak said. “We liked to play together. Everybody knew that. It’s just, I guess we were doing so good with Bergy and March, it was hard to split us up. I just think it was well known I wanted to play with Krech, he wanted to play with me, but at the same time we are the players and we’re playing with the players who we are with.”
OK, so the main question people are now asking is this: Did Cassidy screw up by not putting Pastrnak with Krejci regularly? There are two angles from which to look at this. The first is on-ice: Would putting Pastrnak with Krejci and someone else with Marchand and Bergeron have produced better overall results? The second is off-ice: Would putting Pastrnak with Krejci have kept Krejci happy and maybe led to him staying in Boston another year or two?
Let’s look at on-ice first, and let’s start with Marchand and Bergeron with Pastrnak vs. those two without him. For the purposes of this exercise, we’re going to look at the 2016-17 season (Pastrnak’s big breakout season) through the 2020-21 season (Krejci’s last season with the Bruins). All numbers come from Natural Stat Trick.
During those five seasons, Marchand and Bergeron played 2,580 minutes with Pastrnak at 5-on-5. The Bruins had 60.3% of shot attempts, 61.5% of goals, and 59.4% of expected goals during those minutes. During the 1,000 minutes that Marchand and Bergeron played with a right wing other than Pastrnak, the Bruins had 58.0% of shot attempts, 60.7% of goals, and 57.4% of expected goals.
So, a little bit of a drop-off without Pastrnak, but maybe not as big of one as you’d expect. You’re probably thinking that you’d be OK with that slight dip as long as the boost Pastrnak would give to the second line outweighs it. So, let’s look at Krejci’s numbers with and without Pastrnak on his wing during the same time period.
In 3,565 minutes without Pastrnak, the Bruins with Krejci on the ice had 54.8% of shot attempts, 56.7% of goals and 53.9% of expected goals. In 1,131 minutes with Krejci and Pastrnak together, the Bruins had 52.2% of shot attempts, 57.4% of goals, and 53.4% of expected goals.
Huh. So not only were Krejci’s numbers not significantly better when he had Pastrnak, but they really weren’t any better at all. Now, if you want to argue that their numbers together would have improved had they been given 20 or 30 straight games together instead of just a few games here and there when Cassidy shook things up, you can certainly make that case. But that’s obviously just a hypothetical and not a fact.
It would be difficult to argue that Cassidy made some sort of obvious mistake by keeping Pastrnak on the top line. He had one of the very best lines in the NHL year after year and didn’t want to break it up. Furthermore, he had a great No. 2 center who, to Krejci’s credit, actually did produce strong results with pretty much anyone. Krejci tied a career-high in points in 2018-19 when his most common linemates were Jake DeBrusk and Danton Heinen. As Cassidy alluded to but didn't say outright, the Bruins don't have that kind of No. 2 center this season, thus making it more necessary to load up the wings on that line.
Lastly, the off-ice angle. Would Krejci have stayed if he got to have Pastrnak on his wing? It seems unlikely. Krejci’s decision to go home and play in the Czech Republic this season had little to do with the Bruins and who was on his line and everything to do with family.
In fact, Krejci loved the line he was playing on to finish last season with Taylor Hall and Craig Smith. Statistically, it was one of the most successful he’s ever had. After the season, his comments about playing with those two were about as glowing as the usually reserved Krejci got.
“Obviously when we did that trade [to get Hall] and I got put together with Hallsy and Smitty, it was amazing,” Krejci said in June. “It wasn’t just on the ice. They’re such good guys, too. Smitty is the nicest person ever. I didn’t know Hallsy at all before. He surprised me. Obviously you know what kind of player he is, but he surprised me as a person.
“We would hang out a lot. We got really close, became really good friends. That kind of carries out on the ice as well. If you get good chemistry away from the game, then you come in the game and sometimes you don’t even have to say anything. You just know how that person feels. It was great. I love playing with those guys, I love hanging out with those guys. I had lots of fun the last couple months for sure.”
If Krejci had left in some previous year, it may have been fair to wonder if who he had on his wings was a factor. There were definitely too many years post-Milan Lucic, Nathan Horton and Jarome Iginla when Krejci didn’t have legitimate top-six forwards on his wings. That, of course, is a general manager problem far more than a coach problem.
But that argument holds little water as it relates to this past summer. Hall and Smith were both coming back, and that would’ve been much more of a reason to stay than to leave.
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