With Grzelcyk’s return, Lohrei sent to AHL
NEW YORK — With the expected return of Matt Grzelcyk to the lineup Saturday following his extended injury stint, the Bruins sent rookie defenseman Mason Lohrei and spare veteran forward Patrick Brown down to AHL Providence.
The promising 6-foot-5-inch Lohrei, just 22, now can develop his game out of the NHL spotlight, which showed there’s work to be done.
Lohrei is big, has reach, and is eager to shoot — a valuable asset not always existent in young players — but he needs to tighten his overall defensive game. The latter point, of course, is the essence of a defenseman surviving and eventually thriving in the NHL.
“Just continue your development; you’re a big part of our future,” noted coach Jim Montgomery to Lohrei before the 7-4 loss to the Rangers. “I think he’s got to grow his game.”
Some of the specifics on the growth chart, per Montgomery:
■ Be “firmer”: “As many plays as he makes with the puck, he’s got to make more plays without the puck — just to be able to round out his game.”
■ Overall game “maturity”: Lohrei didn’t choose to become a full-time blue liner until he entered the USHL in 2018. Many, if not most, NHL defensemen have worked the game from the back end since advancing from their town league “learn-to-skate” programs.
“Most people don’t realize he’s only been a defenseman since he was 17,” said Montgomery. “So there’s tricks to the trade that are hard to learn in the NHL.”
Tough one for a return Grzelcyk, injured in the game against the Panthers on Oct. 30, played the left side next to exBoston University partner Charlie McAvoy.
Grzelcyk logged 18:48 of ice time and finished a minus-2. McAvoy, with a club-high 23:42, finished a minus-3.
“Obviously happy to be back, but a tough one to come back into,” said Grzelcyk. “Time to worry about the next one now.”
The other pairings were the same as Friday’s 5-2 loss to the Red Wings, with Hampus Lindholm partnered with Brandon Carlo, and Derek Forbort riding with Ian Mitchell, the ex-Pioneer who played on Montgomery’s University of Denver teams.
The odd man out: ex-Ranger Kevin Shattenkirk, sitting out for a second game in a row.
Shattenkirk, 34, knows the ropes back there — the ropes that Lohrei needs to learn — but his lack of speed and mobility was apparent over the first quarter of the season. Dearth of footspeed makes the uphill climb on defense ever steeper.
“Play faster,” said Montgomery, reflecting on his message to Shattenkirk. “That’s a big thing we’ve communicated to him. There’s areas of his game that we want him to continue to grow, but he’s still a big part of what we are going to do.”
The pairing of the downsized Grzelcyk and the franchise backliner McAvoy could be one Montgomery goes with long term.
“I think they read off each other extremely well,” Montgomery noted. “There’s a lot of risk that we want in Charlie’s game because he’s a game-breaker, and I think no one understands that better, and is able to complement that better, than Grzelcyk.”
Heavier opponents — those that may try to target Grzelcyk for big hits when he pairs with McAvoy — may require Montgomery to move Lindholm into the spot aside McAvoy. The reliable Forbort, the other left-side D, is best suited to a more physical, less-offensive role on the third pairing.
Rough day for the rookie
Rookie Matt Poitras, now 0-2–2 over his last nine games, was rattled in the first when colliding with McAvoy in the offensive end. The forward spent a few minutes in the dressing room, and clearly looked dazed by the hit, but came back later in the period and finished with 12:34 of ice time. “He’s fine,” Montgomery said. Poitras again was deep underwater at the faceoff dot, losing 10 of 12 . . . The Rangers won 60 percent of the faceoffs (42 of 70), a stat almost unheard of over the last 12-15 years of Patrice Bergeron’s career . . . Charlie Coyle lost all but 6 of his 20 faceoffs . . . The Bruins were outshot, 40-31, but David Pastrnak finished with a game-high six shots on net. He fired 13 attempts total . . . Forbort (assist) was the only Bruins backliner to register a point. The Boston defense has an aggregate line of 7-30–37, which would project to 152 points for the season. As a group last season, they collected 39 goals and 205 points.