This wasn’t supposed to happen. The 2023-24 Bruins weren’t supposed to be the best offensive team in the NHL for any stretch of this season. They certainly weren’t supposed to be able to score nine goals in a game, against any opponent. Not after losing so much firepower over the summer due to retirements and a salary cap crunch.
Bruins offense continues to roll in blowout win over Habs
Yet, here they are. The Bruins are the highest-scoring team in the NHL since Christmas, averaging 4.46 goals per game over their last 13 games. On Saturday, they beat the rival Canadiens 9-4, scoring the most goals they’ve scored in a game in 12 years and coming up one short of the most they’ve ever scored against Montreal.
Nine goals is certainly an anomaly, but it didn’t come out of nowhere. The Bruins have been held under three goals just once in those 13 games since Christmas, and they’ve now scored five or more goals in six of them.
Boston coach Jim Montgomery had seen his team growing towards something like this, especially over the last four games.
“I think it talks about the evolution of our team actually growing offensively,” he said. “…I thought that we've been seeing this coming here for four games. We’re hanging onto pucks, we’re hanging onto pucks, and we ended up with high-grade-A chances. They were numerous tonight.”
Since training camp, Montgomery has envisioned the Bruins as a puck possession team that wins battles down low and at the front of the net and scores greasy, playoff-style goals. They had shown flashes of being that kind of team, but the offense had remained a work-in-progress for most of the first half of the season. Now, that version of the Bruins is starting to show up more consistently.
“I think we're attacking the net much better as a group, and we're just wearing teams down right now,” captain Brad Marchand said. “I think we're taking care of more pucks and playing down low, and we’ve got a lot of big guys up front that are using their bodies to create time and space.”
There were plenty of examples of that on Saturday. On the Bruins’ second goal, Jake DeBrusk and James van Riemsdyk combined to win a battle in the corner, and DeBrusk then took the puck right to the net and banked in a shot off Canadiens goalie Sam Montembeault.
On their third – and Danton Heinen’s first of three – it was Morgan Geekie protecting the puck down low and working it back to the point, followed by Geekie and Heinen both going to the front, where Heinen would redirect a Matt Grzelcyk shot.
Charlie Coyle put on a puck protection clinic before setting up Brad Marchand in the slot on Boston’s seventh goal. DeBrusk did the same before setting up Pavel Zacha on the eighth.
The other thing that stood out Saturday was the depth of the Bruins’ attack. Sixteen of their 18 skaters recorded at least one point, with only Matt Poitras and Derek Forbort (both playing their first game back from injury, by the way) missing out on the fun.
Heinen, who has played all over the Bruins’ lineup this season, started as the fourth-line right wing in this one, and ended it with his first career hat trick. Brandon Carlo (also returning from injury) scored his third goal of the season on a nice center-ice drive, set up by third-liners Trent Frederic and Jakub Lauko (who now has points in back-to-back games for the first time in his NHL career).
The stars did their thing, too. The first line of Marchand, Coyle and David Pastrnak continued to roll, with all three recording a goal and an assist. Marchand’s goal gave him 20 for an 11th consecutive season, which is a new Bruins record. Pastrnak now has multiple points in four straight games and in an absurd 23 out of 45 games this season. His goal was his 30th of the season, third-most in the NHL.
DeBrusk stayed hot as well, recording his second straight multi-point game. After posting just 11 points in the first 31 games this season, he now has 13 (7 goals, 6 assists) in the last 13. Yes, that lines up perfectly with this team-wide, post-Christmas offensive spike. No, it’s not a coincidence that the Bruins look like a better, deeper offensive team when DeBrusk is playing like this.
If you’re looking for defensemen to get involved offensively, that has also happened during this stretch. Charlie McAvoy has 12 points in 13 games and is an eye-popping plus-16 in that time. Hampus Lindholm has nine points in his last 11 games; he had seven in 34 before that. Grzelcyk has six points in his last 11; he had one in 20 to start the season. Kevin Shattenkirk had a stretch of three goals in three games right after Christmas.
“We knew that's how we're gonna have to win this year,” Marchand said of the offensive depth. “Obviously Pasta’s an exception. He produces every night. But we win by committee here, and that's how you need to win in playoffs. I think that's what we've tried to build and what the management and coaching staff has tried to build, is you win with your whole group. When you have everybody chipping in, it's hard to defend. We have a lot of good depth, and that’s showing right now.”
It is showing right now, and if it continues to show, it’s going to change the conversation around this team. For most of this season, many have believed – not inaccurately – that the Bruins’ upside is limited as long as their offense is limited. It was assumed that it would take a deadline trade for a scorer to push Boston to a higher level.
Maybe it still will. Thirteen games does not a season make. But right now, the Bruins are showing that their offensive upside might be higher than most thought.