Once Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy switched up the lines to begin the new year, Boston looked like the team to beat in the NHL.
The Bruins won seven of their first eight games in the month of January, including victories over the Washington Capitals and defending Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning. They also took the league’s best Colorado Avalanche to overtime.
Everyone was chipping in, David Pastrnak looked like he was returning to form and the secondary scoring was coming up big.
But then the calendar turned and it hasn’t been the same story.
The Bruins have two wins in February, both coming against sub-.500 teams. Their most recent loss came after an uninspiring performance against the New York Islanders on Thursday night after controlling the game and taking a one-goal lead in the first period.
Cassidy appeared on TSN 1200 on Friday morning and pinpointed some key differences between January and February.
“Balanced scoring in January, we shuffled the lines around a bit, it seemed to work for everybody. And then it leveled off. The secondary scoring, which has been a problem for us for a number of years, and especially this year,” Cassidy said. “The days the big guys aren’t going, the power play will carry us. The last three games we haven’t generated a lot of power-play opportunities, it’s been there for us in January. February, not so much. Some of that, like I said, is lack of opportunities. Some of the guys maybe underneath haven’t chipped in here and there where they were doing it earlier. I know (Pastrnak) had a great month of January. …
“Then you take (Patrice Bergeron) and (Brad Marchand) out who drive a lot of offense, they drive a lot of play for us in every situation. So you’re going to have a bit of a downtick because of that. So I think those are the reasons to be honest with you. We’re just not outscoring some of our deficiencies in our own end when we have off nights. As a result, we’re not just accumulating points.”
Boston still will be without Marchand for the next two games as he serves a six-game suspension. He has yet to hear his fate after appealing Wednesday.
The schedule doesn’t get much easier for the Bruins. After a Saturday date in Ottawa, they’ll welcome the Avalanche to TD Garden on Monday before embarking on a West Coast swing that spans six games, so they certainly will need to figure out their woes sooner rather than later.
