Killing penalties takes on even greater importance during the Stanley Cup playoffs, which is why Gregory Campbell skating around on one leg is an indelible image from the Boston Bruins’ run to the 2013 Stanley Cup Final.
The former Boston fourth-liner will forever be remembered in Boston for Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals against the Pittsburgh Penguins, when he finished his shift with a broken leg after blocking an Evgeni Malkin slap shot from about 15 feet away.
That’s the kind of effort and mindset it takes to kill penalties in the NHL — especially during the playoffs. That’s the kind of effort and mindset the Bruins will need starting Thursday night when they take on the Toronto Maple Leafs in a first-round playoff series.
Boston has the advantage in just about every situation. The Bruins are a deeper team and much better in 5-on-5 play. Their fourth-ranked power play has the edge over a Toronto penalty kill that finished 13th in the league.
But where Toronto might wreak havoc is when it has the man advantage. Only the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins had a better power-play percentage than the Maple Leafs, who converted on one of every four power plays this season.
Toronto doesn’t have as much depth as the Bruins, but the Leafs have some top-end talent that shines on the power play. Four Leafs players finished the season with at least 19 power-play points, and three scored at least eight power-play goals. Both numbers likely would have been higher had Auston Matthews been healthy all season.
The B’s need at team-wide effort to ensure the Maple Leafs’ power play doesn’t swing a game — or the series.
“It’s still time and space, pressuring as a unit,” Bruins general manager Don Sweeney said Monday at a pre-series press conference. “You’re never going to assert pressure by one; it’s got to be as a group, one goes, I’ll go. Blocked shots is a big key component, being in shooting lanes. It takes a lot of courage.”
Boston allowed five power-play goals in four games against Toronto this season. Unsurprisingly, it lost three of those games. That’s the bad news. The good news, however, is when you go back and look at those goals, there are fixable issues.
(Not having Patrice Bergeron on the ice for three of those goals didn’t help, either.)
No doubt the Bruins will have to do a better job of clearing pucks around their net. Four of the five power-play goals came in or around the crease, mostly because of poor clearing attempts. That includes a fluky goal off the stick off Charlie McAvoy during their Feb. 3 game, however.
But to Sweeney’s point, the Bruins will need to make it a priority to take away space and get into shooting lanes. When you don’t, this is what happens:
Nazem Kadri is a 30-goal scorer. Give him the slightest bit of space and time — especially with a big body like James van Riemsdyk in front — and he’ll make you pay.
These are the sorts of things the Bruins must avoid in order to win this series. Doing so with a relatively young group with little playoff experience will make that task challenging.
“You (have) got to realize that they’ve got to be able to do it in the National Hockey League level against really, really good players that take advantage of time and space and situational things,” Sweeney said. “It’s a steep learning curve in that regard, but it’s a credit to our group.”
