1. Jake DeBrusk has to be consistent to be successful with the Boston Bruins in 2020-21.
DeBrusk’s biggest issue in 2019-20 was the inconsistency in his game. He went from averaging 0.40 goals and 0.62 points per game to just 0.29 goals and 0.54 points.
The main reason for this was DeBrusk’s inconsistent effort game in and game out and his inability to score for multiple games in a row.
2018-19 and 2019-20 started off the same way for DeBrusk, not scoring for the first four games. The main differences for these two seasons were actually how they ended for DeBrusk and how many multi-point games the young winger had.
In 2018-19 DeBrusk had nine multi-point games — four of these were three-point games — and recorded at least a point in six of his last 10 games.
In 2019-20, DeBrusk had just seven multi-point games — in just one of these, he scored more than two points — and recorded just one point throughout his last 14 games of the season — including a 10-game scoring drought.
To put this into perspective, in 2018-19 DeBrusk had multiple scoring droughts that more than one game, but none went more than five games. Including the 10-game scoreless streak, DeBrusk didn’t have any other scoreless streak that went more than four games and only had one of these.
So, the real downfall of DeBrusk’s 2019-20 season wasn’t his inconsistency, it was his consistency at the end of the season of being bad and invisible. In my opinion, this is worse than being inconsistent, as with this he at least has spurts of being good.
All in all, DeBrusk still has to be more consistent in 2020-21 to get back to his 2018-19 form. If he can cut down on scoreless droughts, he won’t have to rely on multi-point games as much and may actually beat his 2018-19 totals.