Is the Worst of 2014-15 Behind Boston Bruins Winger Reilly Smith?

Participants and pundits agree: Reilly Smith’s recent set of back-to-back two-point efforts was the delayed product of a long-suffering turnaround. Even when his preceding scoreless skid stretched to 10 games, he started to perform in accordance with his second-line assignment on the Boston Bruins depth chart.

Smith followed a two-goal effort in San Jose last Thursday with a pair of key helpers in Saturday’s 5-2 triumph at Arizona. He set up Brad Marchand’s icebreaker in the first minute of action—then one of Boston’s doses of insurance to help halt a three-game losing streak.

In the wake of that wound-compressing victory, ESPN Boston reporter Joe McDonald observed that Smith "has dealt with inconsistent play this season, but in his past couple games, the effort, success and sense of urgency have returned."

At this stage, how those attributes vanished are secondary to the fact that they have returned. Whether they stick around will not only gauge Smith’s growth but could spell no small difference in Boston’s long-term fortunes.

Self-assurance is liable to evaporate, even among the most seasoned professionals, when team or individual struggles snowball. That obviously defined a recent stretch for the Bruins, who have dropped a slew of marquee matchups over the past two-plus weeks.

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Being 23 years of age and only in his third professional season, Smith spawned fewer surprises with his slump than most of his peers would have.

With that being said, the Bruins tend to slot him in with Patrice Bergeron and Marchand for a reason. He is expected to minimize those production droughts and replenish his conviction with minimal aid.

Even with the delay in gratification, Smith’s supervisors say he has done just that. Per Jess Isner of the team’s website, head coach Claude Julien pointed as far back as the cusp of Thanksgiving to pinpoint the origin of the young winger’s turnaround.

In the bench boss’s words, as quoted by Isner in a Monday feature:

"

The thing with Reilly — although he hadn’t been putting the points up, for quite a while now — probably in the last week and a half or so, I’ve found him really working hard and competing hard. And then, the last couple of games, I thought you started to see him make more plays and get that confidence back.

"

With the Bruins looking to avert a winless, pointless four-game road trip on Saturday, they needed nothing less from Smith. As the lineup is currently constituted, the Marchand-Bergeron-Smith troika is Boston’s only unit that saw regular action together before this season.

Even when first-line center David Krejci returns from his injury, the second line will still be one of Boston’s sparse specimens of continuity. For the foreseeable future, Krejci will be restoring his rhythm and, presumably, working with Milan Lucic to establish chemistry with a to-be-determined right wing.

As long as Smith and his associates are running a smooth, unfazed operation, at least one top-six trio will be reliably shouldering its share.

When and if the top unit is again living up to its classification, the likes of Smith will face another test of professionalism. A time when complacency is the primal threat would be a welcome development for Julien and Co.

Up to this point, hot-and-cold fluctuation has been a constant motif in Smith’s tenure as a Bruin. Just as he ended his recent 10-game hex with a pair of two-point efforts, he preceded that lull with back-to-back two-point performances.

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Last year, his first season with the team and first full-length NHL campaign, he variously fell into four- and five-game production droughts. Even more egregiously, he had different goal-less skids lasting five, eight, seven, 10 and 15 games.

Yet he also stashed away his share of multi-point efforts in 2013-14, including three in a row with five goals late last December. The latter served to kick a few ice chips over his shoddier spells, owing to his final scoring log 20-31-51.

As he tries to iron out his wrinkles and build on that data, Smith needs to avoid fumbling his determination when fate works against him.

By no means can one expect him to be stellar for each of the next 54 games plus any postseason action. But for where he is in his life and career, he should be ready to perform with and without the puck and with and without momentum.

Consider Marchand’s remarks in Isner's aforementioned Monday write-up, looking back on his two-goal game against the Coyotes. In reference to Smith, he offered, "On both my goals, he made them happen, and he’s all over the ice—backchecking, forechecking, being strong on the puck, and that’s what we need out of him, especially right now."

Remember that Smith was still in college when Marchand, then a second-year NHLer, and Bergeron were helping Boston in its 2011 Stanley Cup title defense. Each of the other two second-liners have no fewer than five years on Smith in familiarity with the Bruins organization.

But despite that discrepancy, Marchand has seen no shortage of authority in his fellow winger’s game of late. That explains the qualitative and quantitative upgrade in scoring chances—let alone the subsequent swell in production over the last two outings.

Smith will need to maintain that authority to avoid canceling out Boston’s gains when Krejci is back in action and back in form. If he can do that, his multi-game absences from the point or column ought to stop approaching double digits.

Unless otherwise indicated, all statistics for this report were found via NHL.com.