1. The Boston Bruins’ discipline issues continued.
I know I’ve written about Boston’s discipline issues this season a decent amount so far, but it just continues and doesn’t seem to be getting better.
After a well-disciplined game against the Flyers in which they only took two penalties, the Black and Gold went back to their old ways and committed a season-high six penalties last night against the Pens.
This was the B’s fourth game of the season where they took at least five penalties. Boston has only played six games and more than half of them they’ve committed at least five penalties.
Although their lack of discipline didn’t directly hurt them tonight — they actually scored on one of the penalty kills — the Bruins really need to find away to cut down the number of penalties they take in games.
If the B’s were able to take at least one less penalty this game may not have gone overtime as they could’ve been using those two minutes to create scoring opportunities at 5-on-5 or even a powerplay instead of defending in their own zone or just dumping the puck down the ice to kill time.
As I said before, taking a penalty kills momentum and can change the direction of the game in a second. Although Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron are two of the best players at scoring shorthanded goals, this shouldn’t be an incentive to take penalties.