The Boston Bruins have started the season with four wins from five games, but this masks an issue with a lack of secondary scoring.
Through the opening five games, the Boston Bruins top line trio of David Pastrnak, Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand have combined for 17 points whilst the rest of the roster has just 15 points combined.
Now, it’s fair to say that we shouldn’t judge based on just five games, maybe it’s fairer to wait until the end of October to fairly judge the rest of the roster. However, given how impressive some of the depth scoring was in last year’s playoff run, you’d be forgiven for expecting more of the same to start this year.
In fact, the sheer fact that the top line is doing a lot of the heavy-lifting isn’t that unusual across the league.
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Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Zach Kassian have a combined 28 points for the Edmonton Oilers through 5 games. Patrik Laine, Mark Scheifele and Blake Wheeler have 27 through 7 games for the Winnipeg Jets. Even in Nashville; Filip Forsberg, Matt Duchene and Mikael Granlund have combined for 20 in their first five games.
So maybe it’s wrong to judge our Boston Bruins on the fact that their scoring is coming from the very top of the line-up primarily.
However, it surely can’t last. We know the pedigree of the Boston Bruins top line and know that they do score at will as well as take on their fair share of power-play and penalty-killing ice-time.
At some point though, guys like Jake Debrusk and David Krejci need to offer something up; they after all are the second line. The top six should all be able to get the team out of jail, it shouldn’t be on the shoulders of just three guys.
Likewise, you only need look at where the Toronto Maple Leafs found scoring the other night against the Detroit Red Wings to realise that if teams start cracking the code, we need the depth guys to step up.
In their game, the Maple Leafs relied almost solely upon their bottom-six to rescue a win, despite some very well-paid point scorers that make-up their top six.
For the Boston Bruins, they need more out of Charlie Coyle and Danton Heinen; Coyle showed he has that touch in last year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs, he just needs to re-discover some form.
Of course, just five games in and with four wins in the bag, there’s no need to make rash roster decisions. We’re icing some new line combinations and players are going to take some time to adjust.
However, if the Boston Bruins can’t get their secondary scoring going by, say, Thanksgiving, maybe they should consider looking to Providence for some spark. Perhaps inserting a guy like Anders Bjork or Jack Studnicka somewhere in the line-up might give it that exuberance it is lacking thus far.
Time will tell whether decisions like that need to be made. Maybe we’re just being a little impatient right now.