Bruce Cassidy has dropped David Pastrnak off the Bruins' top line before. Usually it's been done to help the second line more than the first, and in the past it had always united Pastrnak with David Krejci, whom he at least chemistry with from earlier in his career.
Cassidy elected to drop Pastrnak down to the second line late in the first period of Saturday's 3-2 shootout win over the Panthers, but this was a bit different.
This was done with the clear goal of getting the three Perfection Liners going. The second line of Taylor Hall, Charlie Coyle and Craig Smith was actually off to a good start and playing well in Smith's first game back after missing the last three due to injury.
But Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron and Pastrnak? They were pretty quiet, and not for the first time this week. The trio had been held completely off the score sheet in the Bruins' pair of losses in Florida and Carolina, and they had their hands full again Saturday night matching up with the Panthers' top line of Carter Verhaeghe, Aleksander Barkov and Anthony Duclair.
So Cassidy flipped Pastrnak and Smith. Smith played a bit with Bergeron and Marchand last year when Cassidy would make this swap, so that part of it wasn't particularly uncomfortable. Pastrnak with Coyle and Hall, however, was pretty much completely new.
Pastrnak played just a handful of shifts with Hall last year, with Krejci in the middle. He's played a handful of games with Coyle the last couple years when Bergeron missed time and Coyle moved up to the top line. The three of them together had never taken a shift before Saturday.
So how did this experiment go? In short, Marchand-Bergeron-Smith looked pretty good while Hall-Coyle-Pastrnak started poorly before showing some improvement in the third period.
"It wasn't necessarily anything Pasta. Just the line has been a little bit quiet or snakebitten lately," Cassidy said. "So you try things to get more of a forechecking presence on there with Smitty, a guy that they know will go work and get pucks, because I thought that was the way we needed to play tonight. … It seemed like after the first, we were better."
Marchand, Bergeron and Smith created several good chances and meshed pretty seamlessly both on the rush and while cycling in the offensive zone. In their 8:48 together at five-on-five, the Bruins had 87.5% of scoring chances (7-1) and 81.3% of expected goals (0.26-0.06), according to Natural Stat Trick. They didn't score, but that kind of performance is one you'll gladly take your chances with.
Hall, Coyle and Pastrnak, meanwhile, looked like three guys who haven't played together for about a period. They were spending a lot of time in their own zone and generating very little at the other end. When the second intermission arrived, they were being out-attempted 9-1, outshot 6-1 and out-scoring chanced 3-0. Coyle had scored the Bruins' only goal to that point, but that actually came with Curtis Lazar on his right for a one-off shift.
The common denominator in the first line's first-period struggles and second line's second-period struggles was Pastrnak, who has gone from five points in the first four games of the season to zero in the last three while not looking like himself.
Cassidy elected to keep Pastrnak on the second line in the third, and things did improve. They started creating more and spending more time in the offensive zone, out-attempting the Panthers 6-3 in the final 20 minutes. They nearly scored on a nice tic-tac-toe play from Pastrnak to Coyle to Hall off the rush, but the puck skipped over Hall's stick at the last second. Pastrnak ended up with a team-high four shots on goal, with three of them coming in the third period or overtime.
"I felt like we had some chances and things -- little plays, quick 2-on-1s," Coyle said. "Sometimes when you play with new linemates like that, you click right away. Sometimes you kind of have to build it and it takes a little bit. … I thought we had some chances. Didn't go in for us, but as long as we're not giving up too much and getting our looks, you just have to stick with it and eventually it'll go in."
All the big guns could feel a little better about their night because the top power-play unit snapped out of an 0-for-11 slump at the most important time, tying the game at 2-2 with 6:25 left in regulation when Marchand found Charlie McAvoy backdoor. Coyle, already with a goal in regulation, then secured the win (and the Panthers' first loss) in the shootout.
Whether Cassidy keeps his switched-up top two lines together for another game or goes back to the usual remains to be seen. With another lengthy four-day break before they host the Red Wings on Thursday (seriously, what is going on with this schedule?), Cassidy could easily opt for a reset to normal after what he hopes will be a few good practices. He did make it clear after Saturday's game that Pastrnak on the top line and Smith on the second is still the long-term plan.
But now he at least has an idea what it looks like if he wants to make that switch again at some point, and the third period in particular should leave a positive impression.
