Murphy’s Law: Two points on the Bruins
Headed into action Friday at Atlanta, the Bruins are still one of the hottest teams in the NHL two points ahead of the Rangers for first in the Eastern Conference and five points in front of their Montreal archrivals for first place in the Northeast Division. After going 11-1-1 in November, the Bruins have a 3-1 December record headed into their tilt with the Thrashers tonight. But in their last five periods of play, going back to their 5-3 win over Tampa — the worst team in the NHL — and then a 3-1 loss to Washington Wednesday, two things have become more evident with this squad:
1) The Bruins are human and will have off-nights, but they won’t tolerate them.
2.) The Bruins need to do something to help Patrice Bergeron find his scoring touch again.
As far as the former goes, there is no doubt here that with a coach that should’ve been nominated last season and has to be the frontrunner for the Jack Adams Award for Coach of the Year, this team won’t have too many stinkers or even lapses in effort on a consistent basis. Bruins coach Claude Julien has this team believing in whatever he preaches right now as well as themselves. He made it clear even in a win, subpar play or effort won’t be tolerated.
“Something you don’t like to see, I guess,” Julien said after the Tampa game. “We’re getting used to wins and that’s nice, but we’re at the stage now where we’re looking at how we’re winning hockey games. The way we won this one tonight, we’re not going to win many of them. That’s probably the thing that needs to be learned here. Once we got a comfortable lead, we decided to get cute. And that doesn’t really go well with our hockey club.”
Following the game, that was clear with the players as well.
“It was a good first 20,” said captain Zdeno Chara. “But after that, somehow we still scored some goals, but we got away from our game plan. We just tried to be too cute.”
The same reaction was evident from Julien after the loss in Washington, despite the fact that they faced a goalie, Brent Johnson who played like Patrick Roy or Martin Brodeur in a Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, making ridiculous stops and 33 saves overall to preserve the lead for the Capitals.
“If you’re Washington, you’re going to talk about the unbelievable saves your goaltender made, and we’re going to call it missed opportunities,” Julien said. “We had some real quality opportunities there to score. I thought we could have made it a different game. But I thought that was the difference right there.”
That leads us to the next subject: What has happened to Patrice Bergeron’s offensive touch — or better yet, his timely scoring ability? Bergeron has clearly showed his defensive game is still there after missing most of last season with a concussion and more importantly that he is not afraid to travel into the high-traffic areas or go dig the puck out from the corners. For all those who worried if he would alter his tenacious style, the answer is a definitive no.
Now that being said — and despite the fact Bergeron has 16 points (4 goals; 12 assists) — his timing seems to be off. There’s no doubt from this scribe Bergeron is trying his best and that timing will return. But in a game such as that loss to the Capitals where he had some chances to bury but didn’t, it appeared that maybe Bergeron isn’t completely back to the Bergeron Bruins fans have grown to love and expect. As a good friend said Thursday: “No. 37 was definitely a passenger in the offensive zone.”
Again, Bergeron will no doubt discover his scoring touch again. But for now, as the Bruins head into the dog days of the season, they cannot depend on Phil Kessel to light the lamp every night. And the youthful depth will have off nights as they did Wednesday. So what to do? Before thinking trade, maybe try some new wingers with Bergeron and hope his old winger Marco Sturm returns soon and rejuvenates him in the offensive zone. Yours truly has always loved the combination of Sturm-Bergeron-Chuck Kobasew.
But if that doesn’t work, maybe as the Holiday trade freeze is lifted in late December, start to explore what’s out there. Reliable sources on Thursday indicated the Lightning are about to be blown up, and that former Hart Trophy winner and three-time 30-goal scorer Martin St. Louis could very well be available. He denied my report on Insidehockey.com that he would waive his no-trade clause, but that’s just Marty being the classy, good-soldier he is, according these sources. If and when there’s a fire sale and if he has a chance to go to a Cup contender, he will consider the trade. There will definitely be other teams looking to dump as the season goes on.
However, the theory here would be to have patience and ride the wave of depth scoring this team has experienced so far. There aren’t many deeper and more balanced squads in the NHL right now and yes, the idea of “why fix it, if it ain’t broke” is valid here. But it’s a long season, injuries can mount (as the Bruins can attest to), and if you have the pieces and chance to make your team better, then you should explore those chances no matter how good your team is at that moment.
James Murphy is one of the hosts of the Inside Hockey Radio Show, heard every Saturday and Sunday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on “NHL Home Ice” on XM 204 and Sirius 208, The Team 990 in Montreal, and 1120 AM WBNW in Boston. You can also listen online at www.team990.com or www.moneymattersradio.net. Join Murphy and Todd Carroll as they take you inside the NHL, AHL, NCAA, CHL, and all things hockey. This week Toddy and Murph get Inside Hockey with David Pagnotta (The Fourth Period), Alanah McGinley (Canucks and Beyond), Bob Snow (NHL.com), Tim Rosenthal (Insidehockey.com), Jack Capuano (Head Coach of the Bridgeport Sound Tigers) and Conor McKenna (Team 990). For more info, go to www.insidehockey.com.
