In their wins Thursday (1-0 over Utah) and Saturday (2-1 at Detroit), the Bruins drilled down on defense (surrendering only 42 shots across 120 minutes) and saw both Joonas Korpisalo and Jeremy Swayman submit solid, smart, alert goaltending performances.
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Now two games and two victories into their crawl back to relevance and respectability, the Bruins at least appear to have found a foothold in their game under new interim coach
Joe Sacco.
In their wins
Thursday (1-0 over Utah) and
Saturday (2-1 at Detroit), they drilled down on defense (surrendering only 42 shots across 120 minutes) and saw both
Joonas Korpisalo and
Jeremy Swaymansubmit solid, smart, alert goaltending performances.
Next on the checklist of recovery: goal scoring. To keep it going, the offense must fall into place. While teams certainly don’t win when absent defensive structure and top goaltending, they also have little chance to get on a run if they can’t put some rubber in the other team’s net.
“It’s something that we are trying to work out as a group,” Sacco said late Saturday night in Detroit, where his club scored once on the power play (
Justin Brazeau) and once, finally, lo and behold, at even strength (
Brad Marchand’s GWG). “We want to be more of a shot-volume team.”
Jim Montgomery, hired Sunday to take over the Blues bench after being dismissed here Tuesday, during his Hub tenure preached a possession offense, less concerned about how many shots his charges threw to the net. He emphasized quality chances ahead of quantity, asking shooters to hold the puck for high-percentage shots, or until spotting manpower advantages, with forwards in position to deflect attempts or put away rebounds.
Montgomery, remember, was a center in his playing days and centers typically think pass-first, ideally distributing to shooting wingers.
Sacco was a career winger. Wingers generally think shoot first, second, third … then repeat the thinking process. Maybe.
The Montgomery approach worked exceptionally well his first two years here, particularly in year one with grandmasters
Patrice Bergeron and
David Krejci still co-chairmen of the team’s offensive board. The offense never found its groove this year, and the end came for Montgomery when the defense inexplicably went from spotty to porous to shambles.
To get the offensive pump producing, Sacco hopes shooting will prove to be the primer.
“I’m not talking about just shooting from every angle of the ice,” said Sacco, who collected 94 goals and 213 points in his days at right wing. “But I certainly want our [defensemen] to be more shot-ready. We want to try to get two [forwards] on the inside more, create more rebound chances and two-for-ones … even with our forwards, I think there’s more opportunities entering the zone where we can funnel more pucks to the net and look for some rebound chances there. It’s really just a mind-set, I think, with the group.”
That psychology was one that Montgomery’s predecessor,
Bruce Cassidy, often lamented was difficult for his Bruins to channel. It perennially became an issue in the playoffs, for the Bruins under Cassidy’s watch too often without the guile and grind necessary to establish inside ice, prime scoring spots near the net.
On Thursday, the Bruins outshot Utah, 31-22, then followed with a 29-20 advantage in Detroit. Those margins (+9, +9) under Sacco were their best back-to-back spreads since consecutive shutout wins Nov. 2-3 over Philadelphia and Seattle in which they were +11 and +10. They scored five times in those two victories.
“We need [offensive] contributions from everybody right now,” said Sacco, after noting how the second power-play unit came up with the night’s first goal, Brazeau cashing in a relay from
Tyler Johnson. “We’re having a bit of a hard time to score, but we got one at five-on-five for the first time in a long time, so that’s a good sign.”
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