Kase plays well in bubble debut
Assist on DeBrusk goal in third period
If you’re looking for a bright spot in the Bruins’ third straight loss in roundrobin play, this one 2-1 to the Washington Capitals, it is that they appeared to have some semblance of a second line.
With Ondrej Kase making his bubble debut at Scotiabank Arena on Sunday, his combo with Czech countryman David Krejci and left wing Jake DeBrusk scored the B’s only goal – Kase poked a loose puck to DeBrusk for a quick onetime snap past Braden Holtby – and had some lively legs, especially early in the game.
Kase had missed all of training camp and the first week in Toronto, but looked as good as could be expected.
“I thought he had some jump in his game,” said Krejci. “He created a couple of scoring chances for himself. He’s a really smart player and it’s fun to play with him.
It’s the first game for him in five months, so I’m sure he’ll just be better with each game.”
Before the pause, DeBrusk had been bumped to the Charlie Coyle line and hadn’t had much of a chance to play with Kase.
“I thought he was good,” said DeBrusk. “He’s obviously a fast skater, he pushes the pace and I like to play that way too, so I think that we wanted to keep it simpler today and just get everything deep, even if it didn’t look clean through the neutral zone, just put it to an area. I thought he was on pucks and he got a good look there as well. Obviously there’s positives. It’s just a matter of staying consistent now and learning from each other. I haven’t really played with him. I thought it was a decent first game.”
Krejci said he’s got a good line of communication with Kase.
“We talk a lot. Obviously it helps that he’s from Czech as well so we talk on and off the ice and off days as well,” said Krejci. “We had an idea on how we wanted to play. I thought we were close a couple of times. It wasn’t perfect, but I thought the last two games we were taking steps in the right direction so it’s got to be a little better then next game, a little more urgency around the net, that playoff mentality of shoot the puck, crash the net. I feel like that was what we were missing from our game today.”
Clifton take a turn
As was planned, Matt Grzelcyk was given a “maintenance day” in order to get Connor Clifton at least one game. Clifton played the right side on the third pair with Jeremy Lauzon moving to play his natural side on the left.
Grzelcyk and Lauzon had been the third pairing for most of training camp and the first two round-robin games, but Clifton was active on Sunday and he at least gave coach Bruce Cassidy
something to think about.
“We’ll look at it closer but, yeah, Cliffy is a guy that’s not afraid of the moment,” said Cassidy. “It would keep it a lefty-righty. It’s a smaller pair with Griz and him but we saw it last year. It played well at times against good teams so we are certainly not afraid of that look. We can certainly move people around to balance the size aspect. To answer your question, I don’t know if it’s gong to be Lauzon or Clifton. Johnny Moore is another guy that we know can play. We looked for the balance of size with he Griz and Lauzon pairing. I think Jeremy has been OK but like when he first came to us, some repetitions for the bigger guy take time. So do we have the luxury or not. We’ll have to make that decision in the next few days.”
Said Clifton of his play: “I felt pretty good. I obviously wasn’t expecting it to be perfect. I wanted to play physical, bring some energy and compete on pucks.”
A brusk DeBrusk
Though he scored the B’s lone goal, DeBrusk was not wild about his own game.
“To be honest with you, I didn’t feel good about my game so it’s one of those things where it’s hard to judge. It’s winning battles and board battles as well. I didn’t really love it,” said DeBrusk. “I’ve been moving around I guess and I’ve trying to feel more comfortable with each game. I thought we played a much better overall game today, we just didn’t get the result.” …
Nick Ritchie had a golden chance to get on the board in the second period. In a mad scramble at the Washington goal mouth, Ritchie had a near-empty net at which to shoot but could not get it over the prone Brendan Dillon‘s legs. The puck came right back to Ritchie, but Holtby had recovered in time to stop his second offering.
Foe of format
With the upsets and excitement generated from the play-in round, some have suggested an expanded playoff should be adopted by the league going forward with more qualifying rounds. Cassidy isn’t one of them. He likes the 16-team, four rounds of best-of-seven format that the league normally has.
“I would have preferred we just started that way, personally. Maybe an extra exhibition game or two to get the players going,” said Cassidy. “That’s just my feeling on it. It just dilutes the regular season with the play-in round. If they shorten the regular season a little bit, then I could see that being an option. Anyway, that’s my feeling on it. Maybe if I was the team on the bubble I’d think differently. But this year that wasn’t the case for us.”