WILMINGTON, Mass. — Shortly after the Boston Bruins were eliminated from playoff contention, head coach Claude Julien and his staff began looking at ways to improve the team for next season.
“When you talk philosophical approaches, every year so far, and it will continue to be that way, we make adjustments in our game,” Julien said Wednesday at Ristuccia Arena. “The game evolves, the rules change, the personnel of your team changes. So you make adjustments accordingly.
“Ironically enough, two days after the season was done, the coaching staff, we met and we had already made some adjustments that we felt we’d like to see in our game. Don (Sweeney) happened to come in and we talked about those things, so we’ve already done the work on that. Just goes to show that we’re seeing the same things and on the same page.”
It’s no secret that the Bruins need to play with more speed, improve their puck retrieval and execute breakouts quicker. Too often this season the B’s were pinned in their own zone, and it prevented them from transitioning up ice. This is among the reasons why Boston fell to 22nd in goals scored this past season after ranking third in 2013-14.
“I’m not going to get into details about it, but there’s things we feel we can do as a team with the way the game has changed a little bit to (make) our transition game a bit better,” Julien said.
“There was a time when our transition game was good. With the way teams are forechecking, teams’ forecheck have changed a lot, so we’ve got some other things that we feel we can do that’s going to help us get our transition game out of our own end better, and creating some speed. We had already addressed that, so we’re going to hopefully introduce that into camp like we do every year. Those aren’t changes, to me, those are adjustments like we do every year.”
As the Bruins search for ways to generate more scoring, the team’s defensive foundation won’t change.
“You need good defense and you need good offense. You need both,” Julien said. “We’ve been able to do that for a lot of years. … We gave up more goals last year than we did the year before. So, that should be criticized as much as the goals for. It was a tough year.
“When we’ve compared our scoring chances last year to the year before when we scored a lot, surprisingly enough the scoring chances were almost identical. The biggest difference last year was the finish. And that’s something you got to work on as individuals and as a coaching staff. How can we get our players to have better finish? But the chances were created, and I know it didn’t look that way because when you don’t score it doesn’t seem like you’re offense is as good. It definitely can be better.”
Per War on Ice, the Bruins created just 15 fewer high-danger scoring chances in all situations this season compared to 2013-14, but they scored 48 fewer goals. A number of factors contributed to this drop off, including a team-wide decrease in shooting percentage from 9.9 last season to 8.2 this season. With a bit more luck, improved finish from the players and a more efficient transition game, Boston’s offense could show significant improvement in 2015-16.
Thumbnail photo via Brace Hemmelgarn/USA TODAY Sports Images
