BOSTON — All things considered, Ryan Spooner has acquitted himself quite well during his first season as a full-time NHL player.
Finally unshackled from the constant fear of a bus ticket back to Providence, Spooner over the last few months has grown into one of the Bruins’ more consistent forwards. The 23-year-old centerman has appeared in each of the team’s first 49 games and served as a valuable offensive facilitator even as injuries and inconsistency elsewhere have prompted coach Claude Julien to slot him into a number of different forward spots.
Spooner, who’s seen time as a third-line center, David Krejci fill-in and occasional winger this season, all while being a power-play mainstay, ranks third on the Bruins with 37 points, including a team-high 27 assists.
“I’ve never really been a goal-scorer,” Spooner said Tuesday morning as the Bruins prepared to host the Toronto Maple Leafs at TD Garden. “I think of my pro seasons, my first year in (Providence) I had 17 goals and 40 assists or something like that. That’s probably been the most goals that I’ve scored in the three-and-a-half years that I’ve been playing pro. It helps that I’m on the power play, and I’ve always been the kind of guy that likes to pass, so that’s probably why.”
He’s trying to change that, though. Spooner said he’s made a conscious effort to take himself out of a pass-first mindset and put pucks on net more often.
And that altered approach has shown on the stat sheet. Spooner is averaging 2.9 shots on goal over his last 14 games — during which he’s scored just twice but racked up 13 assists — compared to 1.2 per game over the Bruins’ first 14 contests this season.
“I try to tell myself I need to shoot more,” said Spooner, who ranks fifth on the team with 101 shots on net. “Some games I don’t, and some games I do, but as the season goes on here, I think it has to be in the back of my mind that if I have the chance to shoot, that I have to do that. If the pass is there, then it’s going to be there, but I don’t need to go looking for the pass. If I have a chance to shoot, then I have to.”
He continued: “I’ve never been the kind of guy who’s going to take a one-timer from the outside there and score a lot of the time, so I think I need to do it once in a while and get some shots in. I’ve been usually the kind of guy that tries to get the puck back up to the top or down low or into the middle, but it’s definitely something that I think I could work into my game that could make me a little bit more dangerous on the power play, for sure.”
The Bruins already boast the NHL’s second-most effective power play, trailing only Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals. If Spooner can turn his uptick in shooting into an increase in goal-scoring, the unit could become downright deadly.
Thumbnail photo via Winslow Townson/USA TODAY Sports Images
