Just as they took a step forward after salvaging an overtime win over the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Boston Bruins took another step back amid their inconsistent start.
The Bruins encountered another night of sloppy passing and a slow-moving power play in Tuesday’s 2-0 setback to the Philadelphia Flyers. While some of the concerning early-season trends, like penalty trouble and turnovers, didn’t pop up as much, Jim Montgomery’s club continued to look out of sync within their offensive attack despite landing 21 shots on net through the first two periods.
Joonas Korpisalo kept his team afloat with 17 saves. Despite making a few productive stops on high-danger scoring chances, including a kick stop on Bobby Brink’s net-front bid and a glove save Garnet Hathaway’s 2-on-1 chance in the first, Korpisalo received zero offensive support from his teammates.
The Bruins entered chase mode following Tyson Foerster’s tally from the high slot at 5:32 of the middle frame.
Aside from Brad Marchand nearly banking a shorthanded bid from a bad angle, the Bruins hardly generated traffic in front of Ersson during catchup mode. In fact, they only fired a paltry three shots on goal during the final 20 minutes of play to cap off another frustrating outing.
Joel Farabee capped off Philly’s third win of the year with the empty netter late in regulation. Here are a few observations as the Bruins drop to 4-5-1 on the young season.
The power play remained static.
Through 10 games, the Bruins sit near the bottom of the league on the power play, having converted just six of 42 chances. But Tuesday showcased the extent of their ongoing struggles to generate any sort of scoring chance.
Instead of establishing a shot mentality, the Bruins remain in search of executing a perfect play with their man advantage. That development hardly bodes well in any contest, let alone against a team that prides itself in its shot-blocking prowess, as typical with any John Tortorella-coached squad.
With their stationary setup and slow puck movement, the Bruins succumbed to an 0-for-4 night on the man advantage. They landed their only two power-play shots on net during their 1:37 of 5-on-3 time early in the opening frame.
“Quicker puck movement,” Montgomery said on what his team can do to improve the power play. “If you’re moving the puck quick enough, and you’re thinking shot first, they’re not going to be in shot lanes.”
As simple as it sounds in theory, the Bruins could use more than a shot mentality to produce better results on a struggling power play. They could also use a more aggressive shooting philosophy during 5v5 play.
Frustrations are mounting for Boston’s sputtering offense.
The Bruins didn’t encounter many difficulties transitioning pucks up ice against the Flyers. Instead, their challenges stemmed from getting pucks through traffic upon their attacking zone entries.
More often than not, the Bruins settled for low-percentage shot attempts along the points. For a team in a scoring rut, the perimeter-based approach hardly provides a recipe for success.
“We had some opportunities in the second, but we didn’t do a good enough of that in the third,” captain Brad Marchand said. “You can’t play perimeter against a team like that. So you just have to get inside [near the net] a little bit more.”
Granted, the Flyers defended the front of Ersson’s crease well enough for their first shutout of the year. Even so, the Bruins succumbed to overthinking their decisions with the puck.
The power play’s lack of a shot mentality carried over into even strength. Four of Boston’s forwards, Matthew Poitras, Pavel Zacha, Johnny Beecher and Mark Kastelic, failed to land a single shot on net, prompting Montgomery into another round of in-game changes with his four forward trios.
Indeed, the Bruins can use a reinforcement, be it Tyler Johnson or Fabian Lysell. Even so, they’ll need significantly more production from their top six.
Regardless of personnel, the Bruins need to establish better offensive habits, particularly around the net-front area.
“No one is going to hand it to you free in this league,” defenseman Hampus Lindholm said. “You’re going to have to work for it, and start it right in by maybe winning and battle and go from the and take the puck to the net instead of maybe trying to get that tap in, because that doesn’t happen in this league. You’re gonna have to work for it and to get that mindset from everyone in here and do it as a team. That’s how we get out of it.”
Bruins fail to build on response win over Toronto
Despite some hiccups, the Bruins generated one of their better 60-plus-minute efforts of the season on Saturday. But Montgomery’s club failed to build on that victory over the Maple Leafs and now finds itself back at square one.
“I think just gotta find a way to piece two good games in a row together,” forward Matthew Poitras said. “I felt like we had the puck a lot tonight, and we were in the O-zone a lot, but we have to find a way to puncture their D-zone coverage when they’re collapsing toward the net. So, yeah, we just have to find a way to get scoring chances.”
The Bruins created several quality looks in high-danger scoring areas against Toronto and didn’t let a blip on Auston Matthews’ tally late in regulation affect them.
On Tuesday, the Bruins encountered dropoff following Foerster’s tally. And frankly, they hardly produced much of a scoring threat en route to another early-season setback.
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