Time off helps Shattenkirk rediscover his top game
Kevin Shattenkirk was hired by the Bruins as a cast extra. An experienced actor brought in to fill out the backline chorus, specifically the right side hole created when Connor Clifton departed as a free agent to Buffalo on July 1.
For the last 3-4 weeks, Shattenkirk, 34, has become a bigger part of the Blackand-Gold show. The former BU standout contributed a pair of goals and five points the last 10 games, an impressive uptick for a guy whose ineffective and seemingly indifferent play led to a pair of scratches in late November.
The two games spent watching rather than playing, Shattenkirk noted following Thursday’s workout in Brighton, worked “hand in hand” with a meeting he had with coach Jim Montgomery prior to the club’s Nov. 27 game in Columbus.
Montgomery’s message was clear: He wanted more. What he had seen from Shattenkirk wasn’t nearly good enough.
“We had a great, honest conversation about what I thought I was doing and . . . thought I was moving in the right direction . . . and he just said he wants to see more,” recalled Shattenkirk. “He wants me to be more aggressive, offensively and defensively.”
To that point in the season, Shattenkirk had cobbled together a, shall we say, modest production line of 0-3–3 in 15 games. Truth was, Montgomery wanted more because he had seen almost nothing out of Shattenkirk, whose offensive talents have delivered better than a halfpoint per game over his 916-game career (468 career points).
Montgomery wanted to see that Shattenkirk. The engaged version. Ready and eager to jump into plays and take some chances, within the framework of Montgomery’s defensive-based system.
To underscore even more what Mont
gomery wanted, the second of Shattenkirk’s scratches came Nov. 25 at Madison Square Garden, home of the Rangers. It cut especially deep because it was the Blueshirts who, four years earlier, bought out Shattenkirk halfway through a four-year deal ($6.65 million annual cap hit) they originally signed him to in hopes he would run their power play.
Born in New Rochelle, N.Y., poised to be a hometown hero, Shattenkirk instead was sent packing.
By Montgomery’s eye, the talk in Columbus proved a more important change agent than the scratch at MSG.
“We came to an understanding,” said Montgomery. “Maybe it was more clear and concise, and it was give and take. I’ve felt that since then, he’s done a lot more of the things that we believe need to be part of every Bruin’s fiber.
“Because of that, he’s had the puck more. When the puck’s on his stick, he’s an intelligent hockey player that makes good decisions, and that leads to our puck-possession game.”
In Montgomery’s world, “fiber” translates to focus and attention and details. Energy is an assumed ingredient. Alert, active participation is, too, but not every player masters it the way Patrice Bergeron did for virtually every shift of his NHL existence.
“Closing on people. Second and third effort on pucks,” said Montgomery, asked to sharpen his definition. “Not standing and watching, but being part of the five guys that are trying to kill plays. It happens to a lot of players, where they don’t close on people, and they’re not part of scoring chances against because they’re nowhere near the play. Because they are standing and watching.”
None of that could have been easy for Shattenkirk to hear. Not after a long, successful career, including a Cup win in Tampa that came in the immediate wake of being cut free by the Rangers. Yet the numbers that have followed prove he took the message to heart.
“I think when you hear that,” said Shattenkirk, reflecting on Montgomery’s urgings, “especially with the way my game is suited, it’s kind of like a green light to trust my instincts a little bit more offensively and put myself in good positions to get goals . . . or, really, put yourself in a position to create more offense.”
Shattenkirk delivered his first goal Dec. 2 in Toronto, only five days post come-to-Monty talk. He popped his second only a week later at home against the Coyotes.
Two goals, while hardly prolific, make up 20 percent of all the goals scored by Bruins defensemen this season. Only Charlie McAvoy (3) has more. Headed into Friday night’s game in Winnipeg, Shattenkirk and rookie Mason Lohrei are the only Bruins D-men to have scored over the last 14 games.
“I think I have a good understanding now of what’s right and wrong,” said Shattenkirk, acknowledging the tricky balance between trying to score while also adhering to standard blueline duties. “I trust that I’m able to recover and I trust that our system allows me to do that as well, and I’ve got guys who are going to cover for me.
“Obviously, Monty’s a guy who wants to see offense and see us creating, and that’s something I enjoy doing.”