Team has plan to fix third-period issues

Jim Montgomery is looking for a little more aggression out of his troops when it comes to third-period play.

The Bruins coach wants to take the fight to the opponent rather than sit back and defend.

On the recent four-game, 5point road trip (1-0-3), the Bruins surrendered third-period leads in losing to the Canucks and Kraken.

“It’s really what we discussed today as a group,” said the coach following Wednesday’s practice at Warrior Arena. “When you look at the overall league, it seems to be happening everywhere, but we concern ourselves with us, and how we’re playing.

“When we look at these last two games, it’s why in the second game? Vancouver had a real good push. We don’t feel Seattle had so much of a push. It was more of our lack of poise with the puck and game management that allowed them to get the opportunities to get back in the game.”

Montgomery said the mindset must be to keep building on leads rather than just protecting them.

“I felt we were tentative up in Seattle, and you’ve got to play to extend leads and to own the puck instead of not wanting the puck,” he said. “And I’m not saying we played that way, but it looked like that. It felt like that.”

Brad Marchand agreed with his coach and said developing a closer’s mentality has to be a priority because “it’s only going to get tougher from here,” as teams make their playoff pushes.

“We kind of sat back a little bit in some of the games where we had the lead and you can’t do that in this league, teams are too good,” said the captain. “They come at you hard, and when you sit back, you give them that opportunity.

“So it’s about having that attack mind-set and continuing to push and close those teams instead of sitting back and seeing what they’re going to bring.

“The good thing about it is we can control that.”

Montgomery wants to guard against bad habits — be they mental or physical.

“It is kind of weird because usually every game is its own animal,” he said. “but it seems like on this trip almost every game was the same and it felt like we’re in the same routine going into the third and it just worked itself out that way.

“So it can be like that, but I think being at home, being around our families for the first time in eight to nine days, is going to be a good thing.”

Too many penalties

Montgomery sees a common thread in the club’s recent rash of too-many-men-on-the-ice penalties.

“The last three have been the guy going on the ice where the person has jumped too early, so they’re looking at, they know who they have [to replace],” he said. “The person may look tired or whatever. It looks like they want to get to the bench and then [the player that is ready to jump on] looks to track the puck and they don’t see that the guy didn’t come to the bench because there was a turnover and they’re coming back at us, whatever the case. But the guy, whoever you have, you’ve got to watch that guy and then find the puck when you go over the boards, so we don’t have too many men on that.”

Not ready yet

Hampus Lindholm took a pre-practice twirl with assistant coach John McLean. The defenseman missed the four-game trip after a knee-to-knee collision against the Stars on Presidents’ Day. “He just started his progress back, so he’s still not available over the next couple of days and we’ll just see how it progresses after that,” said Montgomery . . . Pending free agent Jake DeBrusk, who is in the final months of a two-year, $8 million deal, said there has been no progress on a contract extension . . . Morgan Geekie wore a full bubble face mask at practice after he took a friendly-fire shot to the mug off the stick of Kevin Shattenkirk Monday in Seattle . . . Heading into Wednesday’s slate, David Pastrnak (38 goals) was fourth in the league with 85 points.

A night for Knights Bruce

The Bruins host

Cassidy’s reigning Stanley Cup champion Golden Knights Thursday. Las Vegas will be without Jake Eichel as the Chelmsford native continues to rehab from a knee injury . . . Cassidy’s take on the Bruins: “In general, not a lot of weaknesses . . . . A lot of the guys are doing the same damage. It’s Pasta, it’s March, it’s [Charlie] McAvoy. They’ll play hard and they’ll play together.”