Bruins interim head coach Joe Sacco said on Tuesday that Fabian Lysell will play at some point during Boston’s five-game Western road trip. The sooner the better, because the Bruins desperately need anything that might resemble an offensive spark.
The Bruins started said trip in disastrous fashion Thursday night, falling 5-1 to the Vegas Golden Knights. After a decent, scoreless first period, the Bruins got hemmed in their own zone for much of the second and fell behind 2-0. They gave up three more goals in a lifeless third period before managing to avoid the shutout with a late goal from Morgan Geekie.
The Bruins landed just 19 shots on goal in the game. Incredibly, they have now been held to 20 shots or fewer in three straight games. Since the NHL started officially recording shots in 1959-60, no Bruins team had ever done that.
They have been held to 25 or fewer shots in six straight games, something they had only done once before (in October 1998). They have been held under 10 shots on goal in 10 straight periods.
We could go on, but you probably get the point: There is just nothing happening for this team offensively right now. They’re spending too much time pinned in their own zone, chasing the puck instead of winning it back. They aren’t breaking out or transitioning cleanly. They aren’t forechecking enough. When they do get looks in the offensive zone, they’re either missing the net or getting shots blocked too often. Overpassing has been a problem, too, and one that especially bothers Sacco.
“It’s something that we talk about. Obviously we overpass,” Sacco told NESN after the game. “We talk about playing off the shot more, shot volume. We did it for a while, we had success, but now we’re trying to make the cute play, the fancy play all the time. It doesn’t work in this league. … Until we start building our game more offensively, creating more zone time, we’re going to spend time in the D-zone.”
Is Fabian Lysell going to fix all that? Of course not. No one person is. Lysell may even be guilty of getting too cute at times himself.
But the Bruins really don’t have anything to lose here. They’ve been rolling out the same lineup game after game, and all they have to show for it is a four-game losing streak. If the unspoken goal at the management level is to just get as high a draft pick as possible, then maybe that’s not a bad thing.
Still, if Lysell is with the team, then he should play. The Bruins might as well see how he looks against NHL competition. Otherwise, it would’ve been better to just leave him in Providence for the AHL stretch run.
Lysell, the Bruins’ 2021 first-round pick, has played just one NHL game to this point, back on Dec. 28. He played fine, and even helped set up the game’s opening goal in a 4-0 win over Columbus. He hasn’t exactly forced the Bruins’ hand since going back to Providence. Lysell went through a stretch of 12 games with just four points from late January through late February, but he had picked it up again before this call-up with five points in six games.
“The reports from Providence are all positive, as far as his game down there,” Sacco said of Lysell this week. “And not just offensively, but his 200-foot game, his play away from the puck, his ability to stay on pucks, things that we need to see from some of the young players. So yeah, I think it's good that he's getting an opportunity.”
Great. Give him the opportunity then. Will Lysell help the Bruins score? Will he “outscore his mistakes,” as team president Cam Neely put it earlier this season? Maybe, maybe not. Lysell might not be ready to make a positive impact in the NHL. But this roster already has more than a couple players who aren’t making a positive impact right now.
We’ll see if the Bruins decide to change their lineup for the first time since the trade deadline when their road trip continues in San Jose Saturday night.