Trailing 3-2 midway through the third period, Bruins coach Marco Sturm decided to make some changes. He shortened his bench and switched up two of his top three lines. Marat Khusnutdinov and Fraser Minten, Boston’s two youngest players, not only continued to get shifts, but did so as linemates with David Pastrnak.
Trusting the kids in this situation paid major dividends, as it was that unusual line combination that tied the game with 4:54 left in regulation, when Khusnutdinov put back a rebound off a Minten shot. And then Sturm tabbed Khusnutdinov again in the shootout, and he scored the lone goal of the game-deciding skills competition to lift the Bruins to a 4-3 win, their fourth in a row.
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That trust was not blindly given. The 23-year-old Khusnutdinov and 21-year-old Minten earned it. Khusnutdinov was a healthy scratch five times in the first 10 games of the season, but Sturm liked the way he responded and worked through it so much that when Khusnutdinov finally got back in, Sturm started to give him looks on the first line – even before Elias Lindholm went down with an injury.
“He's been good,” Sturm said of Khusnutdinov after Tuesday’s win. “He goes out there and plays hockey. He loves it. The guys like him in the room. It's also not fair, probably for me, like putting him in a tough spot, playing with a superstar like 88. It's not easy, but he's been hanging really well, and that's why he got my trust.”
And now, with the trust of his coach, Khusnutdinov is suddenly developing a knack for scoring some pretty big goals. He scored the overtime winner in last Thursday’s win over the Sabres, confidently finishing off a 2-on-1. His tying goal Tuesday was just a great effort, as he swooped in to collect the rebound and buried a backhander while diving to the ice. His work to win the puck back in the corner helped set up the chance in the first place.
He looked cool as can be in the shootout, even if he was surprised to hear Sturm call his name.
“He was actually pretty funny,” Sturm said of Khusnutdinov’s reaction to being picked for the shootout. “He looked at me, he's like, ‘Me?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He was like, ‘OK.’”
Minten, meanwhile, never got scratched, but he did have his ice time scaled back in a couple games. On Oct. 21 and 25, he had the lowest time on ice on the team twice in a three-game stretch, getting under 10 minutes in both games. He had gone eight games without a point. Sturm said at the time that he thought Minten had started to play “a little bit shy.”
Like Khusnutdinov, Minten has bounced back. Since the second of those two reduced-role games, Minten has registered four points in five games. His ice time climbed to 13, 14, 15 minutes. On Tuesday, he played a season-high 16:27.
And like Khusnutdinov, Minten has also stepped up in some big moments. He scored the overtime winner in the Bruins’ second game of the season. He set up Khusnutdinov’s overtime winner last Thursday. He also got the assist on Khusnutdinov’s tying goal Tuesday, and helped that line turn up the pressure with some offensive-zone cycling, something he had also helped the third line do consistently in recent games. He won several big faceoffs late in Tuesday's game as well.
With some uncertainty over the direction the Bruins are going, a lot of fans and media have been calling for “the kids” to get more opportunities in Boston. Perhaps the recent success of Khusnutdinov and Minten is an argument for giving more young players, some of whom are off to strong starts in Providence, a chance.
Or maybe it’s an argument for letting Sturm do this his way, on his timeline, using ice time as a lever as needed. His handling of Khusnutdinov and Minten is certainly paying off at the moment.