Secondary scoring remains a slight issue for the Boston Bruins
The Bruins top line is arguably one of the very best in the NHL. Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak are all among the NHL’s elite players. It’s no secret that Bergeron is one of the best two-way forwards, while Marchand and Pastrnak are among the best scorers in the league.
The trio combined for 260 points last season, with Marchand reaching the 100-point mark for the first time in his career.
The issue for the Bruins is that if the top line wasn’t scoring, nobody else was able to pick up the slack. David Krejci quietly had a very solid year in which he recorded 73 points, but his main wingers Jake DeBrusk and Danton Heinen both failed to reach at least 50 points last season.
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Boston Bruins head coach, Bruce Cassidy tried different line combinations in order to find some help for Krejci, but lack of a true right winger for the second line was obvious all season long.
This became more obvious during the playoffs, and this ultimately hurt the Bruins during the Stanley Cup Final.
Boston didn’t have a ton of money to spend during the offseason since they needed to use whatever cap space they had to sign Charlie McAvoy and Brandon Carlo.
As a result, they still search for somebody to play right wing alongside Krejci. Will Heinen be able to fill that void or is Karson Kuhlman a better fit? Only time will tell, but at the moment there is still a lot of uncertainty around that position.
The only sure thing is that the Bruins will need to find a source of secondary scoring to take some of the pressure off of ‘The Perfection Line.’