Boston Bruins
“We needed to be better.”
Marco Sturm had no qualms with the Bruins‘ fourth line on Thursday night.
Boston’s checking unit of Tanner Jeannot, Mark Kastelic, and Sean Kuraly understood the assignment for Game 3 against the Sabres — doling out punishment whenever they hopped over the boards.
Much like the first two playoff bouts against Buffalo, Kastelic and Jeannot bowled over several Sabres skaters when given the opportunity. As TD Garden roared with approval, that line cashed in on the chaos — with Jeannot snapping a wrist shot past Sabres goalie Alex Lyon at 3:26 in the second period.
Unfortunately for the Bruins, that trio was the only grouping in Boston’s forward corps to get the memo on Thursday.
“They did their job,” Marco Sturm said after Boston’s 3-1 loss to Buffalo. “Got rewarded with one big goal, but we just didn’t have enough today, and that’s just not going to do it in the playoffs.”
As rewarding as it was for Boston’s fourth line to land on the scoresheet Thursday, the Bruins aren’t going to extend their season for much longer if that checking crew is the main conduit of offense.
A game after Boston’s second line did most of the heavy lifting in the offensive zone, the Bruins’ top-six unit — featuring talents in David Pastrnak, Elias Lindholm, Pavel Zacha, Viktor Arvidsson, Morgan Geekie, and Casey Mittelstadt — struggled to generate any sort of traction against Buffalo on Thursday.
In the 16:14 of 5-on-5 ice time that the first and second line were out on a shift Thursday, the Bruins generated just six shots on goal and five total scoring chances.
Boston’s fortunes weren’t much better on the power play, which went 0-for-4 and generated eight shots on goal across eight minutes of 5-on-4 reps.
Pastrnak’s baseline stats through three games against Buffalo have been encouraging (one goal, four assists). But they didn’t exactly tell the full story.
The Bruins are going to need more direct play from their top winger — be it a barrage of shots or pucks carried into Grade-A ice — to coax more offense out of this crew.
Across three games and 40:13 of 5-on-5 ice time, Pastrnak has generated just two high-danger scoring chances. It should come as little surprise that an on-ice wrecking ball in Kastelic has generated three high-danger looks — in just 22:28 of 5-on-5 reps.
”Have to make it a little harder to go to the crease, get a little bit more O-zone time and have that O-zone possession, where you … play off the shot a little bit, where you recover the puck, and that’s when holes open up, and that’s when you get more opportunities,” Pastrnak said. “So definitely on the offensive end, I think we can do a much better job and make it harder for their goalie. And getting more pucks to the net with the people around there.”
Quality scoring chances were few and far between for the Bruins on Thursday, especially after a failed penalty shot from Arvidsson appeared to take some of the wind out of Boston’s sails.
Even with their Game 2 heroics, the Bruins are going to need more from their second line moving forward. After sporting a plus-20 goal differential (44-22) in regular-season play, the Zacha line has been outscored, 3-2, through three games against Buffalo.
It should come as little surprise that both of Buffalo’s wins so far in this series have come in matchups where their big guns up front have delivered.
In Game 1, it was Tage Thompson seemingly willing his club to a late-game rally from a two-goal deficit.
On Thursday, fellow first-line forward Alex Tuch snapped home Buffalo’s game-winning tally 4:03 into the third period after a physical shift from the Sabres’ top forward grouping.
If Boston wants to bring this series back to Buffalo knotted in a 2-2 deadlock, it’s going to need its stars to respond in a similar fashion on Sunday afternoon at TD Garden.
“Another tight checking game,” Pastrnak said. “Obviously had opportunities to tie it and or extend the lead. And unfortunately, we didn’t. We needed to be better.”
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