How are the Boston Bruins going to line up for Saturday night’s Game 1 against the Toronto Maple Leafs? We don’t know for sure, but we can get a pretty good idea based on the way coach Jim Montgomery lined things up at Friday’s practice.
NESN's Sophia Jurksztowicz joins to talk Bruins playoffs
Let’s run through how things looked in practice, which is the same lineup we would anticipate seeing come 8 p.m. Saturday night:
Forwards
Danton Heinen – Pavel Zacha – David Pastrnak
Brad Marchand – Charlie Coyle – Jake DeBrusk
Jakub Lauko – Morgan Geekie – Trent Frederic
Johnny Beecher – Jesper Boqvist – Pat Maroon
The top line is the same as it’s been for weeks. Heinen has really clicked with Pastrnak and Zacha, so no reason to touch that.
DeBrusk briefly got dropped to the third line late in the regular season, with Geekie moving up to the second line, but flipping the two back to their usual spots always seemed to make sense. Geekie is better through the middle of the ice than on the wing, and DeBrusk’s defensive play will allow Montgomery to use Coyle’s line as a shutdown, matchup line against the Leafs’ offensive stars. The Bruins do need DeBrusk to also contribute more offensively; he had one point in the final 10 games of the regular season.
Geekie and Frederic are good together. The Bruins have struggled to find the right fit next to them. James van Riemsdyk was good there earlier in the season, but he hasn’t scored a goal in two months. Van Riemsdyk did play pretty well on Tuesday against Ottawa and helped create several scoring chances, but it appears that may not have been enough to win a Game 1 job. Lauko brings energy and physicality on the forecheck, which is presumably why Montgomery seems to be leaning towards putting him in. He has flashed a little bit with Geekie and Frederic at times, but has struggled mightily to get and finish scoring chances, potting just two goals all season.
Boqvist’s speed through the middle of the ice and defensive smarts have locked him in as fourth-line center. Maroon’s truculence and Cup-winning experience get him in the lineup, despite playing just two games since returning from back surgery. Beecher was briefly sent down to Providence this week, but was back in Boston on Friday and ahead of van Riemsdyk in the practice line pecking order. If he’s in the lineup Saturday, his faceoff and penalty-killing abilities would be the reasons why.
Defense
Hampus Lindholm – Charlie McAvoy
Matt Grzelcyk – Brandon Carlo
Kevin Shattenkirk – Andrew Peeke
Grzelcyk took a shot off the leg at Friday’s practice and missed a couple drill rotations, but returned after a few minutes and was able to finish practice. Montgomery said he’s “fine” and even joked that if Grzelcyk were a Maine Black Bear instead of a BU Terrier, he would’ve gotten up right away.
The top four could be interchangeable based on matchups and game situations, as Grzelcyk-McAvoy and Lindholm-Carlo have been the much more frequent pairings this season. But Montgomery does clearly like the idea of putting his two best defensemen (McAvoy and Lindholm) together.
“It's good to have two really good defensemen playing out there,” Montgomery said. “Who knows? We're very flexible. We moved our defensemen all around. We can use Lindholm with McAvoy, Carlo, Peeke. We can use McAvoy with Grzelcyk, with Lindholm, with Peeke, with Carlo. He’s played with everybody. So, just because they're slotted together doesn't mean they’re gonna play together the entire game.”
Peeke has assimilated well since being acquired at the trade deadline and certainly seems to have locked down the third spot on the right side behind McAvoy and Carlo. His physicality and penalty-killing are welcomed, and Montgomery sees a player who could thrive in a confrontational playoff series.
“I would expect he's the kind of guy that thrives on competition in the playoffs,” Montgomery said of Peeke. “Now, we gotta wait to see it. We'll see.”
The final spot comes down to Shattenkirk or Parker Wotherspoon, who bring two very different skillsets. Shattenkirk contributes more offensively, including on the power play (more on that in a minute), while Wotherspoon brings more physicality and sturdiness in his own zone. At least to start the series, it appears Montgomery believes Shattenkirk’s skillset is required more.
Goalie
??????????
Montgomery said the Bruins have, in fact, decided which goalie will start Game 1. Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman both know who’s starting Game 1.
No one is telling the media, though. This is the playoffs, the season of secrets. If I had to guess, I think it’s Ullmark based on his superior play since the All-Star break. But Swayman was in net for a pair of 4-1 wins over Toronto in March, and also had the better final start of the regular season.
We’ll all find out Saturday night when the Bruins hit the ice for warmups. Then we can mercifully turn our attention to arguing over who starts Game 2.
First power-play unit
Pat Maroon
David Pastrnak – Pavel Zacha – Danton Heinen
Kevin Shattenkirk
Second power-play unit
Jake DeBrusk
Morgan Geekie – Charlie Coyle – Brad Marchand
Charlie McAvoy
At least in practice, Montgomery kept together the new-look units that he finished the regular season with. It would be a bold call to actually start the series with McAvoy and Marchand, two of Boston’s stars and team leaders, on the second unit or 1B unit or whatever you want to call them.
But, there’s no question that the new top unit, with Shattenkirk quarterbacking it, looked better against the Senators on Tuesday (when it went 1-for-2) than any previous iteration of PP1 had looked in weeks, maybe months. They had good movement and they got more pucks to the net, and Montgomery believes the second unit has followed suit in practice.
“There was no movement. There was no purpose to what we were doing,” Montgomery said of the power play’s prolonged struggles before the recent changes. “We were fading away from the net instead of converging towards the net. Both units today, we were converging towards the net. So, I'm just happy with the pace of the power play.”
These units have the added benefit of keeping the Bruins’ top six forwards with the same linemates they have 5-on-5, which could also help with power-play chemistry.
Getting demoted to the second unit could be a blow to the ego of players of McAvoy and Marchand’s stature, but Montgomery said they’ve been on board with whatever helps the Bruins win.
“The great part about the Bruins is the leaders will do whatever's best for the Bruins,” Montgomery said. “If they think having two units go one minute each is what’s gonna give us the pace and the purpose to have success, they’re all-in.”
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Meanwhile, here's how it looks like the Leafs will line up based on Friday's practice -- with one huge caveat. William Nylander, their second-leading scorer, did not practice. Coach Sheldon Keefe said only that Nylander could be a possibility for Game 1, but did not elaborate any further.
Tyler Bertuzzi - Auston Matthews - Max Domi
Matthew Knies - John Tavares - Mitch Marner
Nick Robertson - Pontus Holmberg - Calle Jarnkrok
Connor Dewar - David Kampf - Ryan Reaves
Morgan Rielly - Ilya Lyubushkin
Simon Benoit - Jake McCabe
Joel Edmundson - Timothy Liljegren
Ilya Samsonov