Regrouping B’s face decisive week
EDMONTON — Since Bruce Cassidy took over the Bruins’ bench a month and half ago, the team has exuded a confidence and all-around esprit de corps, winning games in just about every way imaginable.
But as they learned on Thursday night at Rogers Place in Edmonton, good vibrations can take you only so far. You still have to put in the hard work, and work smartly, in this league to have the kind of run that the B’s have been on.
Prior to the 7-4 thumping at the hands of the revved up Oilers, the truth is that in a few recent wins — against Philadelphia and Vancouver — the Bruins got away with taking a period off here and there.
Connor McDavid and the Oilers gang didn’t let them off the hook.
Now, the Bruins are facing what could be a decisive week with games against Toronto, Ottawa, Tampa Bay and the Islanders, all direct competitors for a playoff spot. If the B’s hope to play hockey beyond April 8, Thursday’s debacle will have to be a lesson learned. They especially have to clean up in front of their own net.
“It’s an outlier,” said defenseman Torey Krug. “It’s something that doesn’t happen very often with this team. It does serve as a wakeup call to fix some things defensively. Maybe we were getting a little too comfortable, but we’ve played some games before this game where I thought we did a strong job in our slot. I thought they took the game over in our slot. Hopefully we can just tighten up next time.”
There are plenty of reasons to believe the Oilers game was indeed an outlier. The B’s had played 15 games under Cassidy, won 12 and been in all of them. They were also playing their third game in four nights against a rested, homestanding opponent.
But they still have to get back to work.
“You have to. We’re in the race right now,” said center Patrice Bergeron. “We want to win. We obviously want to be in the playoffs. We’ve got 11 games left and we have to move on, but we do have to learn from it. You can’t just say that it’s going to be fine the next game. We have to go back to the way we’d been playing lately.”
Bruins notes
One major difference between Cassidy and predecessor Claude Julien is that he’ll break up his lines in a heartbeat. While Julien liked to wear down opponents by rolling the same four, Cassidy mixes it up. His regular change of pace move is to flip right wingers David Pastrnak and David Backes, putting Pastrnak with Bergeron and left winger Brad Marchand usually when the team needs a quick strike.
In that sense, the forward lines will never be as settled as they once were.
Still, the Bruins have not yet found a great fit at left wing for the David Krejci line. Drew Stafford has been there lately, but the rightshooting Stafford doesn’t look nearly as comfortable as on the right wing. His lone assist on the trip, which came on Matt Beleskey’s insurance goal in Calgary, and his last goal, the late game-winner against Philadelphia, both came when he moved to Ryan Spooner’s right.
Arguably, the best second line has been Peter CehlarikKrejci-Pastrnak. It is also true that that trio had some brutal shifts in their own zone and the rookie Cehlarik’s confidence appears to have taken a hit from being on the ice for goals against, as well as his inability to put away good scoring opportunities.
Cehlarik was assigned to Providence late Thursday, with the hope for him to regain his confidence and come back to rejoin Krejci. It’s a tough role for a rookie, but this is a rebuild-onthe-fly, after all. . . .
The B’s did not release an official update on Beleskey, who took a Bergeron blast off the side of the head and was bleeding as he left the ice with 11 seconds left on Thursday.
Beleskey, however, did take to Twitter.
“Doing alright just a scary moment. Thanks for the kind words. Really could have used that assist (though).”