During the month of April, the Bruins' power play had become a major subject of concern for the team. Its failure to produce for 12 straight games was creating questions about how the team would fare in the playoffs, which begin next week, without success in such an important facet of their game.
Finally, in the Bruins' 5-0 win over the Buffalo Sabres on Thursday night, the power-play drought came to an end, fittingly with leading power-play goal-scorer David Pastrnak scoring the breakthrough goal.
To break the team's 0-for-39 slump on the man advantage, both Pastrnak and Taylor Hall struck on the power play, two minutes apart. The goals were Pastrnak's 40th and Hall's 20th of the season.
The timing of the power-play goals, coming in the team's second-to-last game of the regular season, was important for the Bruins, who hoped to right the ship in that area before the postseason.
"It was nice to just, as you said, to end it and we can move forward especially right before playoffs. I think it's perfect timing," said Bruins captain Patrice Bergeron, who had a hat trick and a power-play assist in the win.
"We've worked on some things that we wanted to get better at. I think it's getting there," he said. "A lot of things that we've done tonight, that we were moving the puck a lot better. Not perfect, obviously, but there is always room for improvement. But, yeah, it was nice to get it."
On the play that broke the drought, Hall found Pastrnak driving towards the net, assisting the Bruins' first power-play goal of the night. He then scored a power-play goal of his own when he put in a rebound in the crease after a sequence of good puck movement by Boston.
The Bruins went 2-for-6 on the man advantage against Buffalo. They received two of their power plays as a result of two failed offside challenges by the Sabres, who were assessed a delay-of-game minor in the second period and then a double minor in the third that resulted in the Hall goal.
Now that the streak without a power-play goal has been broken, Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy said, "Hopefully that loosens some guys up and it carries forward."
"We don't need to be talking about it forever. So it's good to get them out of the way," Cassidy said.
Boston's power play first went stagnant on April 4 in Detroit and couldn't break through until April 28 against Buffalo. A majority of the drought coincided with the absence of Pastrnak, who has a team-leading 15 power-play goals.
In the nine games that Pastrnak was sidelined, the Bruins failed to convert on any of their 25 opportunities.
"It's almost like when you're in a slump, when the team hasn't won in a while, usually their last few games before they win they play well, they just don't quite get the break. And I think that's what happened a little bit recently with the power play," Cassidy said.
"Certainly not everyone was crisp. Our first one [Thursday] wasn't, although the second unit got a good look from [Craig Smith and Charlie Coyle], a rebound. So you could sense it was happening. They had a good one to finish the night the other night against Florida. So it was going to come sooner or later."
The Bruins had positives to take out of the game besides just the upturn of the power play. Bergeron scored his 400th career goal on a hat trick, Linus Ullmark got his first shutout as a Bruin, and Boston moved within one point in the standings of the Tampa Bay Lightning, with the potential to pass them for third place in the Atlantic Division on Friday.
