The Boston Bruins didn’t do anything well enough in Friday night’s 6-2 loss in Columbus. For the second time this season, they pretty much no-showed against a Blue Jackets team that is outside the playoff picture.
The first meeting, a 5-1 loss at TD Garden on Nov. 18, was the straw that broke Jim Montgomery’s back, as general manager Don Sweeney announced a coaching change the next day.
There won’t be any such drastic change this time around. The Bruins’ overall play under interim head coach Joe Sacco has not necessitated it. There have been tangible improvements, especially at 5-on-5. We highlighted some of them just before the Christmas break.
One of the problems that killed the Bruins on Friday, though, is something that has not been fixed since the coaching change: their special teams play.
Boston allowed the Blue Jackets to score on all three of their power plays Friday, with all three of those goals coming in the first two periods. The Bruins went 0-for-2 on their own power plays. For as poorly as the Bruins played at 5-on-5 in this one (and it was their worst 5-on-5 effort in weeks), it still could have been a close game after 40 minutes if they had just broken even on special teams.
Losing the special teams battle, however, has been too common an occurrence for these Bruins. After Friday’s game, they now have a minus-15 special teams net this season, worst in the NHL. Their power play remains stuck in 31st place in the league at 13.4%. Their penalty kill, which showed some signs of improvement early on under Sacco, has backslid to 75.4%, putting them 25th in the NHL.
Let’s start with the penalty kill, which has not been nearly good enough for the last few weeks. The Bruins’ PK is now just 14-for-24 (58.3%) in the last nine games. They had a big five-minute kill that helped them beat the Capitals right before the break, but that momentum did not carry over to Friday.
Whereas the Bruins took away the net-front and slot against Washington’s power play, their penalty kill got dominated in those crucial battle areas against Columbus. Sean Monahan found open space in the slot to poke in a rebound on the Blue Jackets’ first power-play goal. On the second, Dmitri Voronkov was alone on the left doorstep after Brandon Carlo ventured too far into the circle. On the third, Voronkov struck again by getting inside position on Mason Lohrei atop the crease.
“We’d have to watch some more video on that, specifically tonight, with what went wrong, things we can clean up so we can be better,” Charlie Coyle said when asked about the PK after the game. “When your special teams are good and you take responsibility of that, you give yourselves a good chance to win. We saw it last game killing a five-minute. We see what that does for our team, and what it can do to kind of dampen their spirits as well. So, when you give them those, that only feeds into their game more and takes away from us. So, that’s definitely an area that we want to clean up.”
The Bruins’ power play, meanwhile, did get seven shots on goal on their two opportunities, but only a couple of those were truly dangerous chances. They spent too much time on the perimeter standing still, and also turned the puck over on too many zone entries.
The difference in urgency between the Bruins’ and Blue Jackets’ power plays was best exemplified by what each one did when the other team had to deal with a broken stick. When Carlo broke his stick during a Blue Jackets man advantage (on a Columbus slash that should have been a penalty, for what it’s worth), they ramped up the pressure and got the Bruins scrambling. Carlo, now playing with Elias Lindholm’s stick, overcommitted in part because Columbus got the stickless Lindholm isolated on an island, which is what led to Voronkov getting open on his first goal.
When Columbus’ PK went down a stick on Boston’s first power play, the Bruins didn’t do enough to force the issue. They mostly continued to pass around the outside before eventually settling for a low-angle David Pastrnak one-timer that Elvis Merzlikins had no problem getting square to.
The Bruins’ top power-play unit, in particular, continues to struggle mightily. That group, which features Pastrnak, Lindholm, Charlie McAvoy, Brad Marchand and Pavel Zacha, has scored just three times in the last 23 games. The second unit, which features Lohrei, Justin Brazeau, Charlie Coyle, Morgan Geekie and either Trent Frederic or, recently, Oliver Wahlstrom, has scored six times during that stretch.
Sacco, like Montgomery before him, has been hesitant to shake up the personnel on that top unit. At some point, though, something has to give. Sacco and assistant coach Chris Kelly, who has been charged with power-play duties for a couple years now, can’t just keep hoping that group’s breakthrough is right around the corner when they’ve provided little reason to believe it is.
Sacco has gotten the Bruins to play better at 5-on-5, Friday night notwithstanding. His biggest challenge now is fixing both special teams units, which looked broken long before Friday. They'll get a chance to bounce back right away against the same opponent, as Boston hosts Columbus at TD Garden Saturday night.