RAW BLUELINERS EXPERIENCE GROWING PAINS
Not only is Brad Marchand on a great line, he also utters some pretty good ones.
About the nifty move he made on Senators defenceman Dylan DeMelo to set up Boston’s fourth goal Tuesday, the Bruins winger said: “He reached, I teach’d.”
The following afternoon, DeMelo was asked what he should have done differently on the play.
“Just try not to get dangled, I don’t know,” he said. “He’s a world-class player and he made a world-class move. It happens. As a D-man you’re going to get exposed to top players a lot more. It was a 2-on-1 and I saw that I had maybe a stick on him. I tried to go stick-on-puck and he kind of squeezed it through.
“When you commit like that you’ve got to get the puck or the body. I didn’t get either. He went by me and made a nice play. Something I can learn from.”
DeMelo and the Senators’ other relatively green blueliners will be in for another stern test on Friday in Colorado, where the Avalanche are led by the line of Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen and Gabriel Landeskog — the Western Conference answer to Marchand, Patrice Bergeron and David Pastrnak. (Before Wednesday’s games, the NHL’s scoring leaderboard had Bergeron, Rantanen, Pastrnak and McKinnon in the Top 5).
The Senators will be without veteran Mark Borowiecki, who was suspended one game by the NHL’s Department of Player Safety on Wednesday evening for his elbow to the head of Bruins defenceman Urho Vaakanainen. They’ll be getting another back in the return of Cody Ceci, who has missed four games with an upper-body injury.
DeMelo will no doubt see plenty of MacKinnon and his wingers. And he’s looking forward to the challenge.
“Playing in San Jose, I didn’t really play against top lines too much,” said DeMelo, a 25-yearold who mostly lined up against bottom-six forwards in the first 133 games of his career. “For me, this is a learning experience as well.”
Not just the physical part, but the mental game. Dwelling on missed assignments or bad plays only increases the chances of more mistakes. Players have to move on, and quickly.
“First goal (Tuesday) I kind of gave the puck away, too, but I felt I buried that and was playing well,” said DeMelo, who has five points and leads the Senators with a plus-6 rating. “Overall, I thought I had a pretty strong game, minus two mistakes.
“But that’s the way it goes. It’s going to happen. You have to be able to be mentally strong. It’s not always going to go the way you want it to go. You could have a great game and the puck goes off you and in, how are you going to react? You have to react the right way. Guys in this room are real good at picking you up when things go wrong.
“Maybe I stayed up a little bit later than I wanted to last night, thinking about it, beating myself up about it. But you bury it and move on. Over 82 games you’re going to get danced a few times. There’s going to be giveaways and things like that. The good thing about it is you get to come here and work at it again. Work on your game and just try to get better.”
Max Lajoie, a 20-year-old who will be skating in his ninth NHL game on Friday, is also sure to be targeted by an Avalanche team that will have last line change. He knows this and he’s embracing it.
“For sure, Colorado’s top line has been pretty hot of late,” Lajoie said. “It’s going to be a pretty good challenge for me, if I get sent out there and they come on. It’s going to be an awesome challenge. Actually pretty excited about it.”
The Senators’ last line of defence will be Craig Anderson, making his sixth straight start.
Coach Guy Boucher has stated repeatedly that, as a rebuilding team, the Senators have a number of players who will be overmatched in certain situations this season. Right now, and presumably for some time, they’ll be experiencing growing pains.
“A guy like DeMelo, who’s been terrific for us, he’s had to take a lot of minutes against top players, a lot more than he’s ever had to,” Boucher said. “It’s an adjustment because a guy like Marchand will turn you inside out, even though you’re a shutdown guy.
“You’re fine for six, seven, eight shifts, but over time ... it’s difficult. We need time.”
While he had a selected group of five that did well against the Bruins at even strength, Boucher says he won’t even bother trying to get certain combinations out against Colorado’s best.
“On the road, the way we’re built, it’s going to be whoever they want, their guys against our guys,” he said. “You can jump the boards a little bit, but you disrupt your bench a lot when you have to do that on the road.
“I won’t have a shutdown line. We probably won’t have a shutdown pair. We’ll try to get Ceci out there as much as we can, of course, but the reality is we’re playing tag right now with our players. It’s your turn, then it’s your turn. Everybody gets to develop. That’s the mindset we have.”