Grzelcyk looks to power up play

BRUINS NOTEBOOK

Matt Grzelcyk practically grew up at the Garden with his father, John, having worked on the bull gang for decades. But in the home opener on Monday, the Garden ice was no friend to him.

With the stubbornly warm, humid weather hanging around this week, the ice on Causeway Street played like it was Velcro, with pucks sticking to the surface at the most inopportune times. And Grzelcyk, trying his best to fill the hole on the power play left by the injured Torey Krug, was victimized by it several times in the early going.

The B’s eventually did get one goal on the power play late in the first period, which helped Grzelcyk’s confidence, but his labor on the advantage is still a work in progress.

“I feel fine. I don’t know (if the ice) was in my head but it was just sticking couple of times,” said Grzelcyk. “I second-guessed myself a little early, but as it went on I felt a lot more comfortable. We looked at some video and I think we had a couple right in the first period. Toward the end we got it moving.

“Obviously you’d like it to be crisp right from the get-go. That’s the focus now, if we get another one in the next game. We just have to stick with it as much as we can. It’s nice getting the goal obviously, but it was definitely not as crisp as it needed to be.”

Not helping matters is the fact that the B’s have not gotten a ton of ingame practice. Through three games they’ve had just five man-up chances, scoring on two of them. That’s a pretty good percentage, but it’s not exactly humming just yet. For Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak, the power play is almost second nature, but Grzelcyk is still learning how to read off them.

“With the power play, a lot of it has to do with chemistry and just knowing where everyone is,” said Grzelcyk. “It’s something I’m currently trying to learn on the fly now.”

Puck drop earlier

Well, sports fans, you won’t have to choose between the Red Sox and Bruins on Saturday.

The Bruins had been scheduled to play the Detroit Red Wings at 7 p.m. on Saturday, which would have been in direct conflict with the 8 p.m. start for the Sox’ Game 1 of the American League Championship Series against the defending champion Houston Astros.

But the NHL, with a pretty-please coming from the Bruins, changed the start time to 3 p.m.

Back to normal

The Oilers, who started their season with a 5-2 loss to the New Jersey Devils in Sweden, have been in Boston since the beginning of the week and practiced at Warrior Arena yesterday. Former Bruin Milan Lucic said that his body clock is almost back to normal.

“I found myself going to sleep after the eighth inning of the Red Sox game and I didn’t see the ninth, but I probably saved some years on my life not watching that,” said Lucic, who despite having last played in Boston in 2015 is still very much a fan of the local teams . ...

While Zdeno Chara will see most of Oilers star Connor McDavid’s shifts on the back end, coach Bruce Cassidy said the fourth line, with speedy and physical center Sean Kuraly, could also see a fair amount of the wunderkind.

“Sean’s 6-2 and he’s 208 (pounds), so he’s got the frame to do it and he’s got the foot speed, so we may look at that at times to try to match (McDavid’s) speed and force the puck out of his hands. And Sean enjoys that part of the game,” Cassidy said.