Boston Bruins: Dominance of the top line is becoming a big problem

The dominance of the Boston Bruins top line is obviously an issue for opposing teams, but equally it’s becoming a big issue for the team itself.

While it’s great right now that David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron are lighting up anyone in the Boston Bruins’ path, should any of them miss a few games, through injury, suspension or otherwise; you have to wonder where the scoring is going to come from.

Right now in the NHL, Pastrnak and Marchand are unmatched on a points-per-game basis, averaging 3.9 points per game combined or 2.09 for Pastrnak and 1.82 for Marchand. Their closest rivals are the duo of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, who have combined for 3.5 points-per-game for the Edmonton Oilers with matching 1.75 individual rates.

The rest of the point scoring from the Boston Bruins line-up (16 players) combines for 3.375 points-per-game and that includes the 11 points that their line-mate Patrice Bergeron has. If you remove him from the maths, suddenly that scoring rate is 2.86 points-per-game across 15 guys.

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The point being that the Boston Bruins rely on three players for 50% of their points. If we look purely on a basis of goals and not points overall, the picture becomes even less pretty. Of the Boston Bruins’ 36 goals this year, 23 of them come from the first line forwards – that’s almost 64% of the goals.

We’ve stated before that the team need to pick up their secondary scoring game, but with Pastrnak’s early dominance and the way Marchand is combining with him, it masks the problem.

Unfortunately, their shooting percentages don’t look sustainable – Marchand is up at 21.9%; his career-best across a (non-lockout shortened) season is 18.7%.

You’d be expecting him to regress to about there. David Pastrnak, on the other hand, is likely to fall a very long way – his 16.2% last season was his career-high; 29.7% is his current percentage. In recent years, the best number anyone has finished a year on was William Karlsson in the Vegas Golden Knights’ debut season, finishing with a strong 23.4%.

Safe to say that Pastrnak is likely to drop off by at least 4 or 5% as the season progresses, at the very least.

There are hints that the Boston Bruins’ other lines are simply lying dormant; namely the fact that with the exception of Danton Heinen, players aren’t padding their (mediocre) stats with power-play goals. In fact, outside of the three forwards, only Torey Krug seems to be tallying points on the man advantage.

However, the fact is that the likes of Charlie Coyle, Jake Debrusk and company aren’t getting the puck in the back of the net much whatsoever for the Boston Bruins. Even in the dominant display against the New York Rangers, 5 of the 7 goals came from the top-line and 13 of the 21 points all-up went to them too.

You’d have hoped in such a game that the scoring was shared around a little more, but alas the reliance upon Bergeron, Marchand and Pastrnak is becoming blatantly obvious.

IF, and it’s a big ‘if’, the rest of the league can figure that trio out, suddenly we’re in a world of hurt.