After a frustrating 2-0 loss to the Canucks on Tuesday, a game in which the Bruins held an 18-2 advantage in high-danger chances, Charlie McAvoy shook his head and said, “The dam’s gonna break at some point. Just hope it’s soon.”
Consider the dam broken.
One night later, Boston exploded for six goals in a 6-3 win over the New York Islanders, matching season highs for goals in a game and 5-on-5 goals in a game (5). That was as many goals as the Bruins had scored in their previous five games combined.
This was exactly what the Bruins needed offensively. They just needed something they could hang their hat on. They needed to see pucks go in. They needed to know that their renewed commitment to defense under interim head coach Joe Sacco actually would eventually lead to more offense.
Just before McAvoy’s comment about the dam breaking, he had been asked if it felt like the Bruins were on the cusp of a breakthrough.
“You have to believe that. You have to,” he said, not sounding especially confident in his own words.
The fear, especially with a team whose confidence has appeared as fragile as the Bruins’ this season, is that players stop believing in the process if the results don’t soon follow. Their process had undoubtedly been better since Sacco took over. His first three games were arguably their three best defensive performances of the season. They were certainly three of their best 5-on-5 possession games. But the goals still weren’t there, with just three in three games.
Brad Marchand made sure there was no room for any of those doubts to creep in Wednesday. He opened the scoring less than a minute into the game, ripping a shot past Ilya Sorokin right off an Elias Lindholm offensive-zone faceoff win.
“I thought we had a great start to the game,” Sacco told NESN. “We get that one goal fairly early, so it alleviates some of the pressure off the group right away when you score early like that. The guys can relax a little bit, take a deep breath, and just play from there.”
Marchand made it 2-0 five and a half minutes later, swooping in to clean up a loose puck after Lindholm and Justin Brazeau had worked it deep into the offensive zone.
The Bruins’ defense, so stingy in the previous three games, slipped a little in this one. A Parker Wotherspoon turnover allowed the Islanders to cut the lead to 2-1. A Mason Lohrei misplay allowed them to tie it 2-2. After the Bruins went up 3-2, back-to-back bad turnovers by Nikita Zadorov and McAvoy allowed the Islanders to tie it again.
Again, any or all of that may have been enough to break the Bruins in other games. On Wednesday, however, the Bruins stuck with it and just kept pushing. In the second and third periods, the top line of David Pastrnak, Pavel Zacha and Morgan Geekie picked up where the Marchand-Lindholm-Brazeau line left off and took over the game.
On the Bruins’ third goal, Pastrnak made a nice pass to Zacha, who then zipped a seam pass over to Geekie for Geekie’s first goal in seven games, and Zacha’s first point in seven.
Zacha then scored twice less than three minutes apart midway through the third period to put the Bruins up 5-3 and send them on their way to a happy Thanksgiving. Marchand, finishing up a shift, started goal No. 4 with a good forecheck. Pastrnak then worked the puck back to Andrew Peeke, who fired a shot that Zacha tipped in. Pastrnak started No. 5 with a good forecheck of his own, winning a battle in deep before setting up Zacha in front.
“We kept playing,” Sacco said. “The second period, it got away from us a little bit. Self-inflicted, some of the mistakes that we made. But to show the resiliency that we did in the third, just stick with the game plan. Fortunately for us, we found a few more in the back of the net. It's not an easy game, right? It's back-to-back, and I thought our guys showed a great response in the third period.”
While it was important for the entire Bruins team to see anyone score, it felt especially important for the top two lines to lead the way. The Geekie-Zacha-Pastrnak and Marchand-Lindholm-Brazeau lines had both been creating chances and controlling play, but they had not been scoring.
According to Natural Stat Trick, Geekie, Zacha and Pastrnak have an expected goals share of 73.5% during their 77 5-on-5 minutes this season. The Bruins have now outshot opponents 24-5 over the last three games with them on the ice. Marchand, Lindholm and Brazeau have an expected goals share of 64.6% in 87 minutes together.
Those are numbers that are easy to dismiss when the actual goals aren’t following. But when those guys start to finish their chances, like they did five times on Wednesday? Well, numbers like that just might make you believe that more good nights could be on the way.
For now, Wednesday is just one win. But it felt like an important one. At least for one night, the dam finally did break for the offense. With a favorable schedule coming up (five straight games against non-playoff teams), the opportunity is there for the offensive river to start flowing freely.
And if you believe in the traditional Thanksgiving benchmark in the standings (over the last 20 years, 77% of teams in a playoff spot on Thanksgiving wind up making the postseason), then Wednesday was also important because it allowed the Bruins to climb back into a playoff spot, moving two points ahead of the Buffalo Sabres.