Boston Bruins: How They Can Put Away the New York Rangers Next Time

While one could argue that the visiting New York Rangers made a statement in their 3-2 overtime triumph at TD Garden Saturday afternoon, it's hardly one that the Boston Bruins cannot rebut.

The response, though, will likely require a modestly restructured plan of attack.

Before their second of four meetings and before anyone thinks of a potential playoff encounter, the Bruins must draw up a way to bruise fewer Rangers’ skaters with the puck and instead use it to burn their goaltender.

To employ an adage, the former simply does not kill and thereby strengthens John Tortorella’s pupils whereas the latter tends to put an irreparable dent on the scoresheet.

Saturday’s contest confirmed how tightly contested and structurally similar these Eastern Conference titans are and reiterated that a three-point package for overtime/shootout games is the way to go in the regular season. Both teams established that they can compete with each other, and one party departed the scene remembering that one point is more than zero but less than two.

Boston settled for the single, hard-earned regulation point for two chief reasons.

The most direct cause was Andrew Ference’s careless hit from behind on New York backchecker Ryan McDonagh at 1:50 of the sudden-death stanza.

The resulting five-minute penalty meant playing the balance of the contest shorthanded. With three fewer skaters than the standard 10 occupying the ice and one more on their side, the Rangers were free to drain the Bruins’ penalty killers for three minutes.

They did just that before rewarding themselves with Marian Gaborik’s clincher at the 4:56 mark. And they inflated much of their offensive data to bring it closer to Boston’s.

During their last power play, the Rangers tallied eight attempted shots, putting four on net and one in the net.

Conversely, at five-on-five, the Bruins accumulated a jutting 59-36 advantage in terms of attempted shots. They rolled up a 30-24 edge under the SOG heading.

If not for the Rangers’ staggering fortitude and physicality, odds are the Bruins would have gotten to goaltender Henrik Lundqvist with just a little more frequency. In turn, they would have improved their odds of tucking a third biscuit behind him and skating off with a two-point package.

Nowhere was New York’s efficient border patrol more evident than the game’s first four special teams’ segments. That brings us to the other leading cause of Boston’s half-full finish to Saturday’s contest.

The Bruins’ first man-advantage featured two New York takeaways, one shot on Tuukka Rask via Dan Girardi and Girardi blocking Zdeno Chara’s shot, Boston’s only attempt in that five-on-four segment.

Later on, with Gaborik doing time for tripping, the Rangers again relied on their skating penalty killers to stymie the Bruins’ sticks. Chara was again blocked by Girardi while Rich Peverley’s bid met the body of McDonagh. In addition, the Bruins committed two turnovers, and McDonagh unleashed a shorthanded bid that was blocked by Dennis Seidenberg.

Boston’s third man-up opportunity, which carried over into the second period, was comparatively uneventful. Peverley finally put a puck on net on the cusp of the first-period siren, and that was it.

Upon failing to percolate any sort of buzz on the fresh sheet over the first 81 seconds of the middle frame, the Bruins let the fresh-out-the-box Ryan Callahan draw first blood.

Over their fourth and final unanswered power play early in the third period, the Bruins mustered one shot on net via Chara. But afterwards, they turned the puck over and allowed the shorthanded Rangers to pester Rask twice.

In summation, over eight cumulative minutes of power-play time, Boston logged two shots on net, five blocked attempts, five turnovers, one icing, four Rangers’ shot attempts and three shorthanded stabs at Rask.

More than anything, on the power play as well as at even strength, the Bruins demonstrated a slight shortage of maneuverability against the Rangers. They relied on their defensemen to supply both of their goals and roughly half of their shots, whether those went wide or were blocked by Lundqvist or one of his praetorian guards.

While no one should diminish the importance of secondary scoring from the nominal bottom six and the blue line, too much of that is really playing to one of New York’s strengths. The Bruins have already shown they can beat the Rangers by virtue of superior depth, as evidenced by substantially more five-on-five puck possession.

If they are to follow through on that with a win, they need to counter the Rangers’ top six by giving their own scoring leaders a better chance and bigger obligation to step up.

A little more puck movement, feet movement and maybe some more faked shots to stall the opposing defense could be the cure. Instead of letting a sacrificial New Yorker get in the way of another Chara slapper and potentially usurp possession, a Boston defenseman or power-play point patroller should work to get the puck down to a moving, open forward.

Many of the Bruins’ more stimulating shots Saturday, including Adam McQuaid’s goal, resulted from an unsupervised attacker converging with the puck in either lane adjacent to the Rangers’ slot. Their other goal was made possible by Ference beating Callahan to the slot while the rest of the Rangers were focused solely on puck-carrier David Krejci.

The Bruins needed one more dose of that Saturday. They needed someone to steal a little more of the opponents’ attention and buy a little more time and space for a prospective shooter, whether he would be in an open alley or within intimate distance of Lundqvist.

That's usually how one beats Lundqvist and how one beats the Rangers, assuming maintenance in one’s own zone is comparatively sufficient.

That will be something to strategize leading up to this rivalry’s Feb. 14 renewal.