While the Boston Bruins still rely heavily on their top line, the 5-1 win over the San Jose Sharks marked a night that the secondary scoring stepped up.
In a significant number of the Boston Bruins’ games thus far this season, the top line trio of Patrice Bergeron, David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand have all put their names on the scoring chart multiple times.
In fact, when you look to the team’s goalscoring overall, 64% were coming from the top line heading into this game; something we saw as a bit of a problem. Literally half of the teams points were coming from just three players.
Thus it was refreshing to see the scoring come from over sources against the Sharks. While Pastrnak did score and both Bergeron and Marchand tallied an assist each, it was David Krejci and Chris Wagner both having one goal, one assist, two-point nights that stands out as a bigger story.
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Add in goals for Brandon Carlo and Charlie Coyle, as well as assists from David Backes, Zdeno Chara, Torey Krug and Danton Heinen and you soon understand that the performance on Tuesday night was incredibly important for the Boston Bruins, as a whole.
It still doesn’t wholly mask the over-reliance on the top line, nor the decidedly average point production from the likes of Charlie McAvoy and Jake Debrusk thus far, but it certainly proves a point that we’re not a one-trick pony and can get scoring from secondary sources.
The secondary goal scoring’s season tally is up to just over 42% of the team’s goals following this game; still not as high as it should be, but certainly a nicer number than the previous 36%.
Hopefully it proves to be the lighting of the fuse under the likes of Coyle, Debrusk and company in terms of contributing more regularly. Obviously, we’re more than happy for the top-line to keep up their elite point production too!
Perhaps most telling of all is that David Krejci’s return to his second-line center role coincided with the upturn in secondary scoring. Despite routinely being lambasted by Boston Bruins fans, he continues to prove to be a key cog for the team.
His return wasn’t enough to get Debrusk going, but he certainly proved valuable to Heinen, who found himself paired with the veteran Czech center.
We’re fully expecting the lines to be thrown in the blender once more by Bruce Cassidy, given the individual form of some players, but for now, as long as the wins keep coming, we’re not about to complain!
Bring on November, let’s see how long the Boston Bruins can keep up this point streak!