Following Friday night’s 6-4 loss to the Sabres, the Bruins now have just 10 games remaining in the regular season, all crammed into the next two and a half weeks.
The rest of the schedule looks like this: two at Pittsburgh, two at home against the Sabres (yes, seriously, there are still two more against them), two at New Jersey, two at home against the Rangers, one at home against the Islanders, one at Washington.
Obviously, their top priority down the stretch has to be securing a playoff spot. While they are in good shape, they can’t take that playoff berth for granted just yet.
The Bruins still sit in fourth place in the East Division, and while they’re within four points of the three teams ahead of them -- the Capitals, Penguins and Islanders -- with a game in hand on all, they can’t write off the fifth-place Rangers yet.
The Bruins are six points ahead of the Rangers with two games in hand, which is a good place to be. They’ve maintained that breathing room by winning six of their seven games since the trade deadline, but the Rangers have also won five of their last seven.
The Bruins should be able to close this out, but if things really take a turn for the worse, it wouldn’t be impossible for the Rangers to catch and pass them, especially with two head-to-head meetings to go.
Besides clinching a playoff spot, here are five other items on the Bruins’ to-do list with 10 games to go:
1. Settle on a goaltending plan
Jaroslav Halak saw his first game action in three weeks Friday night, taking over for Tuukka Rask in the third period of what at the time was a blowout. He stopped four of the five shots he faced, but was too tentative in clearing away a puck in front of him on the goal.
Now the question is whether Halak will see more game action -- specifically starts -- over these last 10 games. With more time before the playoffs, the Bruins might be able to get enough starts for Rask, Halak and Jeremy Swayman to battle it out for two spots going into the playoffs.
Ten games probably isn’t enough time to do that. Rask is still the Bruins’ No. 1, and they want to get him enough reps to find his rhythm, as he has played just four games so far since his own return from injury.
The decision is who’s going to be the No. 2 for the playoffs. That has been Halak’s job for a few years now, but the rookie Swayman has played very well in the opportunity he’s gotten, going 5-1-0 with a .943 save percentage in six starts.
Turning away from Swayman with how well he’s playing would be very difficult to do. And if Swayman is the two, then the Bruins will want to continue to get him experience with more starts down the stretch. He is scheduled to start Sunday in Pittsburgh, so that may in fact be the plan.
That would leave Halak as the odd man out, and probably seeing little action down the stretch. Again, with more time or a more secure spot in the standings, maybe the Bruins would be able to get Halak up to speed, too. But they’re still in a playoff race, and they really just have to go with what gives them the best chance to win. Right now, that looks like Rask and Swayman.
2. Stop taking so many penalties
For the first time in five games, the Bruins took fewer than five penalties Friday night. They still took four, though. They’ve still topped 10 penalty minutes in seven of their last 10 games, and they still lead the NHL with 10:14 penalty minutes per game this season.
A lot of the Bruins’ infractions, especially recently, have been stick infractions or holds. That is generally a sign of a team that is not moving its feet or not paying attention to details, whether that’s due to being tired, lazy, unfocused or a combination of the three.
The Bruins are playing a very compact schedule. They probably are a bit fatigued, and coach Bruce Cassidy acknowledged there was some extra fatigue this week with a number of players who received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Regardless, the Bruins need to clean it up. They do have the second-ranked penalty kill in the NHL (just recently dropping from first), which is a major silver lining here, but you don’t want to have to keep relying on it this much.
It means tiring shifts for your core penalty-killers. It means scattered ice time for guys who don’t kill and less time to find any sort of rhythm or roll lines five-on-five. And it obviously opens the door for teams with a better power play than Buffalo’s to make you pay.
On Thursday night, Brad Marchand and Charlie McAvoy both logged over four minutes of penalty-kill time. Patrice Bergeron was at 3:29, and it was on the PK that he took a shot off the foot that presumably caused the lower-body injury that forced him to miss Friday’s game. It’s just not what you want for guys who would preferably be on the attack as much as possible.
3. Get the power play back on track
Speaking of the attack… The Bruins are finally getting five-on-five scoring, which is great and probably more important than power-play scoring come playoff time. But you still want to have a dangerous power play too.
The Bruins have had that for a good chunk of this season, but the man advantage has gone quiet recently, going 0 for its last 15. It hasn’t really been a case of just being snakebitten either -- they’ve struggled to enter the zone, struggled to get set up, and struggled to create enough quality scoring chances.
There are some things to figure out in terms of personnel. Matt Grzelcyk, Charlie McAvoy and Mike Reilly have all seen time as the quarterback of the top unit, and the Bruins will have to settle on one of them soon. There’s also the five-forward option the Bruins experimented with a little bit earlier this season, but that wouldn’t seem to be the preference.
Then there’s the Nick Ritchie vs. another play-maker debate. Ritchie was a revelation as a net-front presence earlier this season, with the Bruins repeatedly finding his stick for in-close tap-ins and rebound chances. But opponents eventually adjusted and have done a much better job taking those passes away. Ritchie hasn’t scored a power-play goal since Feb. 21.
Opponents have also done a much better job taking away the Bruins’ other bread-and-butter play, the David Pastrnak one-timer from the left circle. He hasn’t scored a power-play goal since March 18, and hasn’t been as lethal as usual even what that shot has been there.
David Krejci and Taylor Hall loom as tempting options to bump up from the second unit -- Krejci for his vision, Hall for his attacking skill. Both could help unlock some different looks, but it remains to be seen if Cassidy will go down that route or stick with his most common top unit of Grzelcyk, Pastrnak, Bergeron, Marchand and Ritchie and hope they work through it.
Krejci has played on the top unit plenty in the past. Cassidy used Hall on it briefly, but then acknowledged they hadn’t had enough time to practice with him there.
4. Keep building the third line
We wrote a few days ago that the third line of Nick Ritchie, Charlie Coyle and Jake DeBrusk was the only one of the Bruins’ four lines that had not yet gotten going post-trade deadline.
There were encouraging signs in Thursday’s win over the Sabres, including the trio’s first goal in six games together when Coyle and DeBrusk combined to set up Ritchie for his first goal in 13 games.
Then the trio had to be split up Friday night as Coyle moved up to the top line in place of Bergeron, who is considered day-to-day with a lower-body injury.
Ritchie and DeBrusk took another step forward, as it was their line with Sean Kuraly at center that scored a pair of third-period goals as the Bruins launched a late comeback attempt that ultimately came up short. Ritchie scored again and DeBrusk picked up another assist. With them on the ice, the Bruins had a 13-4 advantage in shots on goal and 7-2 edge in scoring chances.
It would have been great if Coyle playing with Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak helped get him more involved offensively, too, but that didn’t really happen. While the trio was able to spend some time in the offensive zone, they struggled to create quality chances and were on the ice for two goals against. Coyle wasn’t directly at fault on either, but he was slow to react to a loose puck in the slot on the second.
Coyle will go back with Ritchie and DeBrusk whenever Bergeron returns, which could be as early as Sunday. The two wings are starting to look more lively. If Coyle can do the same in the middle, there’s still time for this third line to become a strength for the Bruins for the playoffs.
5. Get and stay healthy on defense
You can probably add forward to this now as well with Bergeron missing Friday’s game, but assuming he’s back in the next game or two, we’ll keep this focused on the defense.
Matt Grzelcyk and Kevan Miller both returned this week, so good news there. Both have missed a lot of time due to injury this season, so now the key will be keeping them healthy for the stretch run and the postseason. The Bruins will need to decide if and when they’re going to test Miller in a back-to-back, a situation that is sure to pop up at some point in the postseason.
The big injury the Bruins are still waiting on is of course Brandon Carlo. He hasn’t played since April 1, when he suffered an upper-body injury that’s unrelated to his previous concussion. He has been considered “week-to-week,” but three weeks on, the latest update is that he’s still week-to-week.
Cassidy said earlier this week that Carlo had started to do some off-ice stuff. As of Saturday, it’s unclear if he’s been able to get on the ice at all in the last few days. Once he does, he’ll still need to be cleared for contact and full practice before returning to game action.
Obviously you’d prefer to have Carlo get into at least a couple regular-season games before the playoffs, especially since he’ll likely have a new D partner in deadline acquisition Mike Reilly. Those two figure to be the Bruins’ second pairing behind Grzelcyk and McAvoy, with Miller bumping down to the third pair.
Building chemistry on defense with only two players is usually a quicker process than a trio of forwards doing it, but you’d still like to see Reilly and Carlo get some time in the regular season to do that rather than throw them together for the first time in a playoff game.
If Miller and Jeremy Lauzon is going to eventually be the third pairing, well, that is also a duo that hasn’t had much time together. Connor Clifton, Jakub Zboril, Steven Kampfer and Jarred Tinordi linger as depth options, and at least one or two of them will continue to play until Carlo returns.