Greg Zanon: Has He Officially Replaced Joe Corvo on the Bruins Defense?

Greg Zanon may have met a crucial turning point in his young tenure as a Boston Bruin on his second shift of a March 17 bout with the Philadelphia Flyers. The same could hold equally true for fellow defenseman Joe Corvo.

While Corvo watched from the ninth floor at TD Garden on his first game day as a healthy scratch all season, Zanon did his part from his point perch while the three forwards worked to spot the Bruins a 1-0 lead. A mere 17 seconds after Zanon had his shot blocked by Nicklas Grossman, Benoit Pouliot and Brian Rolston collaborated to set up Chris Kelly’s icebreaker.

With that, the Bruins had drawn first blood for the first time in eight games and two weeks. They had taken their first lead of any kind at any point in five games.

By day’s end, a 3-2 shootout decision snapped Boston’s four-game losing streak, and Zanon, who was also on the ice for Tyler Seguin’s strike later in the opening frame, had a plus-two rating. It was his first positive finish in that column in seven outings with the Bruins, who imported him from the Minnesota Wild in exchange for Steven Kampfer at the Feb. 27 trading deadline.

Since then, with a long-awaited consistently healthy blue line, Zanon has effectively supplanted Corvo on the active line chart.

Beginning with the Philadelphia game and running through Sunday night’s 3-2 triumph at Anaheim, Boston is 4-1-0 in Corvo’s absence with an 18-8 scoring differential. When Zanon has been on the ice over the last five games, the Bruins have outscored their adversaries, 5-1.

Not unlike Rolston, his fellow deadline acquisition, Zanon plainly had trouble adjusting on the fly to the new environment, the new system and the new set of expectations in Boston. He steadily accumulated a minus-five rating over his first six games with the Bruins, but has since exponentially improved by five points in that department.

In addition, he landed but three shots on goal in his first six Boston tilts, then logged six over his next five.

But perhaps most tellingly, of the eight opposing goals Zanon has been on the ice for, Corvo has simultaneously been on duty for four.

Corvo has gone a cumulative minus-eight since Dec. 31, and that figure is actually inflated in his favor by a plus-four that he logged amidst a 9-0 romp over Calgary Jan. 5.

Over 70 total appearances this season, Corvo has landed 165 shots on goal out of 322 attempts, meaning only 51 percent of his bids have reached the opposing netminder. Of those 165 registered stabs, only four have tuned the back of the mesh, giving him an abysmal 2.4 percent accuracy.

When those percentages hold out for that long, it is hard to diagnose anything but psychological softness. When patrolling the points in the attacking zone, the menacing cycle of unfavorable outcomes and unfavorable thoughts have gotten the better of the very man who was brought in to remedy that very problem which plagued predecessor Tomas Kaberle.

And while Zanon is hardly designed to serve the exact same purposes as a Corvo or a Kaberle, head coach Claude Julien’s recent decisions and the recent results all but confirm that the Bruins blue line does not need a supposed puck-moving specialist. They are just fine with another bruiser who transforms defense into offense in a less direct, more subtle manner.

Since joining the Bruins, Zanon has given away no pucks, thrown 27 hits and blocked 13 opposing shots. When he bumped Anaheim’s Andrew Cogliano at 12:24 of Sunday night’s third period, he had officially landed one more hit in 11 appearances with Boston than Corvo has in 70 outings.

And perhaps not so coincidentally, the Bruins have virtually replenished their November/December form in the most intense and critical phase of the regular season.

Corvo’s last game happened to be the night that Boston temporarily tumbled out of first place in the Northeast Division. As soon as Corvo gave way to Zanon, the aforementioned win over the Flyers restored the Bruins’ second-place perch in the Eastern Conference, which they have not relinquished since.

Last season, Kaberle had nothing but the home stretch and postseason to make an impression on the Bruins. The same holds true for Zanon this season.

But whereas Corvo has been generally maligned as another Kaberle, Zanon is setting a tone to deliver a Bruin-like, blue-collar, fruitful physicality. If this trend holds up through the last round of handshakes this spring, the new guy on the blue line could be looking at another summer move while the newer guy is invited to settle in.