NHL Boston Bruins: 10 Improvements They Must Make to Reverse Slow Start

The Boston Bruins are undefeated through the first week in the month of November (three games). But they are still one game below the .500 mark at 6-7-0, meaning the redress from an acrid October is still several strides short of completion.

Accordingly, there are some facets that are still in blatant need of improvement; while others need to stay the course as they are already steadily reversing their direction.

If most, if not all, of the following 10 items are addressed, then the Bruins ought to be securely above .500 between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And the ensuing playoff derby should be more reminiscent of the previous four seasons under head coach Claude Julien.

Power Play

As obvious as this point is, its clichéd status does not diminish its glowering reality.

Through their first 13 games, the Bruins have had 49 opportunities and garnered eight man-up conversions from seven different goal-getters.

There has been mild improvement in recent weeks. In their first six games, the Bruins went 2-for-24. Over the seven that have followed, they have gone 6-for-25.

However, four of those more recent strikes came against some of the league’s flimsier penalty-killing brigades from Ottawa and Toronto. Another one went in off the stick off Montreal’s Tomas Plekanec in a Pyrrhic face-off victory.

All conversions ultimately count the same, but the value will not be felt until Boston starts converting consistently and in bulkier quantities at the expense of all adversaries.

Power Play (Part II)

It is tough to test any opponent’s penalty kill when you are drawing two unaccompanied minor infractions or fewer per night.

That is precisely what the Bruins have done in five of their first 13 games. In Saturday’s visit to Toronto, they went 1-for-2 on the power play. And against the Islanders on Monday, they went 1-for-1.

With a burgeoning offensive threat like Tyler Seguin, they ought to be forcing more flustered back-checkers to hook, trip and interfere.

More Points from the Points

Lately, the better part of the top-six has doled out gratifying quantities of homeward-bound biscuits. Other forwards, such as Gregory Campbell, David Krejci and Nathan Horton, are finally beginning to perk up to varying degrees.

The same cannot be said about the defensemen. Going into Monday night’s game, Johnny Boychuk and Zdeno Chara were the only two Boston blueliners with a goal, having tallied one apiece. Joe Corvo and Dennis Seidenberg, in particular, need to relearn how to hit the mesh.

Corvo was brought in expressly to provide what Tomas Kaberle failed to deliver and has hit double-digits in the goal column three times before, but he is pointless in the last six games. And Seidenberg, coming off a career-high seven strikes last season, is still empty on a whopping 31 shots on net.

More Goals from the Grinders

Patrice Bergeron, Milan Lucic and Tyler Seguin can only offer up so many two- or three-point nights.

If the Bruins are going to win as consistently as they have in other recent years, they will need tangible input from all four offensive lines. Plain and simple.

Redeeming Rask

Monday night’s victory was naturally a solid, favorable U-turn, but goaltender Tuukka Rask can now only hope there is more to come from what is in the middle seat from what is in the trunk.

In his first three starts—all losses—Rask had authorized eight opposing goals on 85 shots. Half of those tallies have come on opposing power plays.

In Rask’s first three appearances, the Bruins averaged exactly six shorthanded scenarios per game, killing 14 out of 18, for a success rate of 77.8 percent. And despite keeping the Islanders at bay most of the night, they committed four unanswered infractions in the second and third period.

Conversely, when Tim Thomas has scraped the blue paint, Boston is 28-for-30 on the penalty kill for a 93.3 percent success rate.

But more tellingly, the Bruins have averaged only 3.33 shorthanded predicaments in front of Thomas, nearly half of the potholes they have put Rask in.

More Fruitful Gardening

With an irreproachable 2-2-0 through their first four road ventures, the Bruins have failed to return to the .500 mark both overall and at TD Garden since a Columbus Day loss to Colorado dropped them to 1-2-0.

With a five-game homestand in the works, the Bruins will soon reach a point where they have played 13 of their first 17 games at the Garden. Afterwards, they will have only two more instances of three or four consecutive home dates (four from January 5-12 and three from February 1-March 3).

No time like the present to improve their transcript and their confidence, because starting November 19, they will have 37 of a remaining 65 games in hostile environments.

Regardless of how they perform outside Boston city limits, the Bruins will still want to reaffirm the Garden as an unfavorable place to visit, especially in the event they miraculously salvage home ice for at least one round of the playoffs.

Getting and Staying Ahead

The Bruins have scored the first goal in only five of their first 13 outings. Of those five instances, their last two games are the only cases where the opposition did not turn around to draw a 1-1 knot.

Against Philadelphia, Tampa Bay and Montreal, the Bruins have had 1-0 advantages lasting 9:28, 1:16 and 11:22, respectively. They regrouped to impose three unanswered goals against the Lightning, but otherwise they let their initial edge devolve into a 2-1 loss.

In multiple wins and losses alike, the Bruins have proven capable of percolating a valiant comeback. But it would be more settling for themselves and their fans if they could manufacture more favorable starts and confidently foster more leads.

Breaking the Hab-it

Dating back to March 13, 2010, the Bruins are on a five-game winless streak in regular-season visits to Montreal.

In four of those losses, they surrendered two unanswered goals in the opening frame and couldn’t recover. In the other one, on January 8th of last season, they allowed two unanswered within the last five minutes of the third period to spill a 2-0 edge en route to a 3-2 overtime falter.

In less than two weeks, they will get their next chance to piece together that elusive, complete 60-minute effort at the Bell Centre. Two nights thereafter, on Thanksgiving Eve, they will venture into Buffalo, where they are 4-4-1 in the last two years, regular season and playoffs included. Two of those victories required overtime or a shootout.

A pair of back-to-back regulation road wins against their two peskiest divisional rivals could go a long way for the Bruins this month and beyond.

Keeping Everyone Fresh

Since returning from a brief preseason injury, defenseman Steve Kampfer has seen action in two games and none of the last five.

Not unlike the goaltending rotation, the Bruins are going to need to give their seventh blueliner a little more action than that for their own long-term sake. In the event someone else is injured or egregiously slumping later on, Kampfer will need to be ready to step up and the best preparation is to get more action under his belt now.

Furthermore, Kampfer could be part of the solution to the current shortage of scoring from the points. Recall that in his rookie year, he amassed five goals and 10 points in 38 NHL appearances.

His 2010-11 goal total thus exceeded that of regulars Johnny Boychuk, Andrew Ference and Adam McQuaid. He also eclipsed Matt Hunwick and Mark Stuart’s cumulative output of 2-5-7 in 53 games with Boston.

More Rostered Seasoning

Boston’s 13 active forwards hold an average age of 25.8 years. The team’s 20 skaters currently in The Show combine for a median of precisely 27 years of existence.

If kept as they are, there is still a decent chance the Bruins can string together a respectable run for the next three-plus months. But when the homestretch rolls around, in order to ensure a complete, long-term recovery from October, a modest transfusion of new blood might be in order.

A reasonably experienced, proven producer with a fresher, unfulfilled hunger for postseason success would be most preferred. A move like that could compel the defending champions to stave off subconscious complacency and try to win for someone who hasn’t won before.

Depending on how the trade market looks both in the immediate and distant future, general manager Peter Chiarelli will want to take some sort of action at some point. If need be, he could make a conscious effort to keep the full NHL roster intact, export a couple of prospects and make room for the new arrival by sending the likes of Jordan Caron back to Providence.