In Round 1, the Bruins power play could produce -- and produce a lot -- without being perfect. The Maple Leafs' penalty kill was awful, so even if the B's made an errant pass here or hesitated to shoot there, they were still going to get enough good looks that scoring felt almost inevitable. They finished that series a robust 7-of-16 on the man advantage, with their top unit scoring five times and the second unit twice.
Round 2 is not going to be like Round 1. The Blue Jackets' PK is not the Maple Leafs' PK. The Bruins, who ranked third on the power play in the regular season, are quickly realizing that they need to be close to perfect against Columbus' second-ranked penalty kill.
The Bruins' second power-play unit did score once in Saturday night's Game 2 loss when Matt Grzelcyk fired a shot past Sergei Bobrovsky after an offensive-zone faceoff win, but for the series the B's are now just 1-for-8, and their top unit of Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, David Pastrnak, Marcus Johansson and Torey Krug has yet to score.
Not only did the Bruins not score on their other three power plays Saturday, including one in the third that could've won them the game had they converted, but they struggled to even create chances. Besides Grzelcyk's goal, they managed just one other shot on goal in 6:22 of power-play time.
They never looked confident or comfortable. There was too much standing around and not enough of the quick movement we've seen from the B's power play most of the season. They tried passes that weren't there. They shot into bodies. They double-clutched on decent looks, waiting for better ones that never came.
As Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy pointed out after the game, the power play is really where he wants to see his big guns -- namely Bergeron, Marchand and Pastrnak -- get going. Pastrnak scored a 5-on-5 goal Saturday night to snap a four-game scoring drought, while Bergeron and Marchand have yet to get on the board in this series despite both being over 60% Corsi through two games.
But regardless of what those three are or aren't doing at even strength, they can and should be doing more damage on the power play. Give the Blue Jackets' PK a ton of credit -- they are legitimately very good -- but the B's should at least be generating some good chances.
"They're pressuring us well and they have good sticks," Cassidy said. "...This is a good kill, and we're a good power play, so we have to find solutions to what they do well. I think it's pressure appropriately. The puck has to get moving quicker. We have to support it better. Us trying to make plays through the seams that are deliberate, it's not going to cut it. We've tried to address that. This isn't one of the weaker kills where you can get away with that.
"And then shot selection would be the next part of it. Sometimes when you have a good kill and they're aggressive, you have to shoot, take the obvious shot, recover the puck. We did that well against Toronto. ... Need a little more of that mindset as opposed to overpassing."
If the Blue Jackets are going to keep giving the Bruins four power plays a game, the B's need to make them pay, and that top unit needs to be leading the way. No more indecisiveness. No more lack of urgency. It's time to show some killer instinct.
The Big Bad Blog is presented by:
