(If worse comes to worse, the B's can always solve their penalty woes by tunneling out of the box a la Andy Dufresne-style.)
The Bruins this season have been nothing if not inconsistent, unless your name happens to be Thornton, Begin, Bitz, Sturm, or Boychuk. Defined by the continued Loss-Win pattern they just can't seem to shake--luckily for them, in the Ottawa and New York games--the Bruins' best line thus far has been their 4th line; their defense aside looking lost on the ice, especially Wideman and his turnover-frenzy, and their offense nowhere to be found, with David Krejci amounting to only one goal so far this season, albeit a very important one.
With 5 points in the last 3 games, the Bruins are statistically the best they've been all season, and are soon facing what one would assume to be another Loss-Win duo this week when they take on a tough Devils team with Brodeur on Thursday, followed by the Edmonton Oilers on Halloween. Yet with all of this inconsistency surrounding the team, there is one thing this team is doing on a regular basis: Playing atrociously on the power play.
Put aside the 7-2 Carolina rout in which the B's went 4-for-8 on the man advantage in the second game of the season. The Bruins this season are 2-for-30 on the power-play, with a -3 rating, giving up three short-handed goals. How does this happen? That's a 6% success rate, and a mere 15% even with the Carolina game included. All things considered, it's a miracle their winning percentage is at .500, only two points behind their tally after the first ten games of the season last year.
With Savard and Lucic out for the next month, the Bruins have a lot of work to do; new teammates, call-ups, line-shifts. Aside from a few lucky bounces that allowed them to beat teams they should have beaten in the first place, the Bruins haven't proven much of anything this season. It's hard to believe that they'll be duplicating their incredibly productive November from last year, when they went 11-1-0.
Nevertheless, the team did show a lot of teamwork, heart, and resiliency on Saturday night against the Sens. After coming back from a 2+ goal deficit for the second Saturday this month, Bergeron nabbed a shootout goal. Not to mention the Bruins looked like they were actually skating in the last two minutes of regulation, continuing into OT after Krejci and Recchi scored in the clutch. Perhaps this could be the Dallas game of this season, a game where the team comes together, and fights for the win, ugly as it may be.
As far as the power-play goes, maybe the B's need Mike Milbury to come down from the NESN studios and give them intermission pep talks, and tell the team how terrible they're playing with the man-advantage, because regardless of a comeback win or not, another shorthanded goal is unacceptable. If Milbury can't change anything, their best shot might be to have Rask line up with Chara on the point to save another shorty.
Hub Hockey Contributor
-Mike Leonard