Neely sees B’s pressing
Wants star players to stop forcing action
Cam Neely fully appreciates the situation his Bruins are in right now. The team’s best all-round player, Patrice Bergeron, is out of the lineup, as are three of the best defenseman in Zdeno Chara, Kevan Miller and Charlie McAvoy. They’ve been gone for a while and, with the possible exception of McAvoy, they are not coming back any time soon.
And up until recently, Neely said, the B’s have received admirable performances from rookies like Jeremy Lauzon and Connor Clifton, defending well and breaking pucks out cleanly.
“But it’s catching up to us right now,” the team presidebnt said yesterday before the B’s hour-plus practice at Amalie Arena.
That was pretty much inevitable, and it was obvious in the 5-0 no-show loss to the Panthers on Tuesday.
But while a defeat like that could have been expected somewhere along the way for the B’s in their current state, Neely’s seen some things recently that have bothered him. And they have less to do with the kids and more to do with the decisionmaking of the top players.
“I just didn’t like a lot of the way we were playing. We could certainly tighten and try to eliminate the amount of scoring chances we’ve been giving up,” Neely said.
“And then, you can’t beat guys 1-on-4 and 1-on-3. It’s not going to happen. Our power play’s got to do a much better job of understanding you’re not going to beat guys on a regular basis like that . ... I just didn’t like the amount of turnovers we had, both on the power play and inside our blue line 5-on-5. Those are mental mistakes that you can correct pretty easily I think.”
Neely didn’t mention any names of players trying to do too much, but you can assume he’s referring to the likes of Brad Marchand, David Pastrnak and David Krejci. Neely knows they’ve been trying to get something going for the depleted offense.
“I get that,” Neely said. “You’re offensive players and you’re relied on to help the team offensively and score some goals. But you start drifting away and start playing more individually, and you’re trying to beat guys when maybe the smarter play is just chipping it in and going to get it. I think you’ve got to recognize what the situation is at that particular time and not force things. And I see some of those guys forcing too many plays and forcing too many individual (plays).”
Neely doesn’t want the impressionable youth to be exposed to that kind of play, either.
“It’s hard because we’re certainly looking to help grow the younger players and have them play the right way in this league,” Neely said. “And you expect younger, less-experienced NHL players do make those types of of mistakes, and you don’t want to see it on a regular basis from your players who’ve played a lot of games in this league.”
As of right now, there doesn’t appear to be any help coming from the outside, at least not yet. And for a day anyway, there was no call made down to Providence for some different young blood.
“We’re constantly talking about what we can maybe do and what the options are,” Neely said. “Providence, we’ve had guys come up and down, and we’ve had guys playing more than we anticipated them playing this year from Providence. But that doesn’t mean we’re done with that. We have to look at all our options to see how we can get ourselves playing a little cleaner. But let’s be honest, we’ve got a tough stretch coming up.”
General manager Don Sweeney has made no secret he’s looking for some help. Even when healthy, they could use — from this observer’s perspective — a top-six winger and a thirdline center, in that order. He’d surely like to make some kind of an impact deal and not just one to get them past this current hump, formidable though it might be. Injuries haven’t helped the B’s standing in the trade market, either.
“It makes it a little more challenging because teams know that you’re a little more vulnerable,” Neely said. “On the one hand, you really want to make a hockey trade and not necessarily just a bandaid, but if there’s an opportunity where it could be a band-aid, you don’t want to give up an asset that may not be ready yet but they are going to be ready and will help you for a lot longer than a band-aid. There’s that delicate balance.”
So for today, at least, the message is to get back to grinding out the points as they did for several weeks. And keep it simple.
“Simplify your game and see where it takes you,” Neely said. “Because playing that way isn’t working.”