In the regular season, the Bruins ranked second in the NHL on the power play at 25.2%. Last year in the playoffs, they had the best power play at a lethal 32.4%.
This year in the playoffs? Dead last. In the words of Dean Wormer in Animal House: Zero. Point. Zero. The Bruins are the only one of the 24 playoff teams that has not scored a power-play goal since the restart, with their 0-for-4 performance in Game 1 against the Hurricanes bringing their total to 0-for-13.
While the Bruins dominated much of Game 1 during five-on-five play, the power play not only didn't score, but it struggled so much it actually killed momentum and even led to a shorthanded goal against. It wasn't just a matter of not finishing chances; it was a matter of not even being able to cleanly enter the zone and get set up in order to create them.
So what do they need to do to get it going? Coach Bruce Cassidy has some ideas, including adopting more of that five-on-five mindset against Carolina's aggressive penalty kill, knowing that they're not going to get as much time and space as they might against other PKs.
"I think Carolina is aggressive, made sure – the way they form that tight diamond in the neutral zone didn't allow us to gain entry with possession," Cassidy said. "Which is something that we try to do as much as any team in this league. Maybe the stubbornness on our part not to get pucks behind them. We have a couple of plays we talked about even before. Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to practice the timing of some of them. We always run that stretch play against Carolina off the end boards. We've had success against them doing that, we actually scored on them up there doing it. We sometimes find that will loosen them up. It didn't work for us.
"Then in-zone, probably forced some plays once we did get possession. I think you have to have a little more of a five-on-five mentality when you're going against that, in terms of protecting a puck, maybe spinning out of a hit and get close support instead of thinking they're going to let us set up. Some of it was just, we had to live it. We did. It cost us a shorty. We won the game so we'll move past it, try to make the necessary adjustments."
Cassidy also noted that there's a reason the power play has lagged behind the rest of the Bruins' game -- because they just haven't been able to practice it, with their full power-play units, enough.
"I think it has hurt us, the fact that you're off for that long," Cassidy said. "Pasta (David Pastrnak) misses camp. (Ondrej) Kase misses camp on the second unit. You don't have a lot of reps. When we got here, a couple guys needed maintenance days, Bergy (Patrice Bergeron), Pasta again. Now all of a sudden, you think maybe you can catch up here on the practice time and we weren't able to do much of that either. So we're behind on the power play. We're going to have to simplify it and be ready for pressure tonight. Hopefully get it going again because it can be a major weapon for us."
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