Not so big, not very bad

[mwonow]

Joe McDonald asks a question on ESPN Boston: What happened to the big, bad B's?
 
I've been wondering that myself. The Bs seem to have become disconcertingly easy to play against - which isn't consistent with either their overall image or the way that they have been winning lately. Are there internal ways of increasing the snarl in the lineup? Should a move or two be made? Or is this what it is - guys who have some puck-moving skill but little likelyhood of causing trepidation in opposing squads?
 
Here's the link to the article asking the question (which to be fair, doesn't really ask any of the others I've posed here): http://espn.go.com/boston/nhl/story/_/id/11876735/what-happened-big-bad-boston-bruins

 

[kenneycb]

It's not too hard to figure out.  They went all in last year by pushing most of Iginla's contract to this year and it caused some a cap crunch that led to Boychuk getting traded and them losing a lot of the physicality on the backend, especially since McQuaid hasn't been good and Miller got hurt.

 

[Red Right Ankle]

Possibly missing a 7 foot tall human wrecking ball has hurt too.

 

[Red Right Ankle]

Also Lucic sucks /TSC

 

[mwonow]

No Chara definitely hurts, and I get that the cap is a real issue. It seems like the guys they bring in/call up aren't very long on grit, though... 

 

[kenneycb]

No Chara definitely hurts, and I get that the cap is a real issue. It seems like the guys they bring in/call up aren't very long on grit, though... 

That tends to happen when you lose three of your top six D at the start of camp for extended/infinite periods a month into the season. And have one recovering from ACL surgery. Those are usually the ones that set the physicality tempo, especially in the D zone, obviously.

 

[Red Right Ankle]

Well, the guys they call up could be more like Miller on the physicality department than Krug.

For call ups, I wonder if it's mostly a result of the most NHL ready guys currently happening to just be the less physical, puck mover types.

 

[mwonow]

Well, the guys they call up could be more like Miller on the physicality department than Krug.

For call ups, I wonder if it's mostly a result of the most NHL ready guys currently happening to just be the less physical, puck mover types.

Thanks, that was what I was trying to get at. You'd hope that the top ml affiliate would have guys capable of filling (at least temporarily) a range of roles on the big club, but it seems like as harder-to-play-against guys go down, they're replaced by guys who have some skills but not a lot of physical presence. Last year's Miller was a good example of having a guy with an edge ready to fill a role on the team, but it seems like the B's depth chart is light on that kind of player this year,

 

[Red Right Ankle]

Sure, but given Chia, Claude and Cam's MO, seems more like an accident of circumstance than an intentional philosophy to me. At least on D. The forwards do seem to be more skill guys, e.g., Spooner, Koko.

Someone who is more familiar with the Provy roster could probably put this to bed pretty quickly.

 

[PedroSpecialK]

Believe me, you do not want to see Chris Breen or Tommy Cross at the NHL level. There are guys who have physicality as a component of their game, then there are the Andy Wozniewskis of the world.

 

[Toe Nash]

Can we define what being "tough to play against" means or is a lot of cliche?
 
McDonald mentions:
-Hitting. But when you possess the puck a lot like the Bruins do at their best you don't do this as much.
-Fighting. They still do this. They don't have Thornton (and the Leafs don't have Orr) so there will be fewer staged fights. Fraser hurt himself and Miller is still missing after hurting himself fighting. They should probably stop doing this.
-"Consistent skating." Every team wants to do this whether their identity is physical or not.
-"Forcing opponents into submission." I don't know what this means. Do NHL players give up because the other team is too scary (especially in 2014 when outright headhunting and cheapshotting is much more suspendable than before)?
-Having emotion. This is nebulous. If Claude is seeing guys tune out that's a problem, but I don't know how McDonald would know that. Short of jumping players and getting suspended I'm not sure what the team should do here.
 
The Bruins have won because they are really good at possessing the puck, they have an incredibly strong and yes, maybe a bit scary HoF defenseman, some talented scorers and top 3 goaltending. They fight often but I'm not really sure they play much more physical than any other team as is their reputation (beyond that being hard to define). With Chara (and Miller) out they are going to look less physical because he pushes people around in front of the net etc., but they are also going to look worse overall because those are good players. When you're losing you can look "soft" but it doesn't mean that is the reason you're losing.
 
I think this criticism is just lazy narrative from guys who miss Shawn Thornton (Haggerty wrote basically the same article here). 
 
I mean, Lucic basically points out the problem: "[Emotion] wasn’t there [against Montreal]. You can talk about scoring only two goals in two games, but the reason we’ve only scored two goals is because we’re not taking care of things in the defensive zone."

 

[mwonow]

Can we define what being "tough to play against" means or is a lot of cliche?
 
McDonald mentions:
-Hitting. But when you possess the puck a lot like the Bruins do at their best you don't do this as much.
-Fighting. They still do this. They don't have Thornton (and the Leafs don't have Orr) so there will be fewer staged fights. Fraser hurt himself and Miller is still missing after hurting himself fighting. They should probably stop doing this.
-"Consistent skating." Every team wants to do this whether their identity is physical or not.
-"Forcing opponents into submission." I don't know what this means. Do NHL players give up because the other team is too scary (especially in 2014 when outright headhunting and cheapshotting is much more suspendable than before)?
-Having emotion. This is nebulous. If Claude is seeing guys tune out that's a problem, but I don't know how McDonald would know that. Short of jumping players and getting suspended I'm not sure what the team should do here.
 
The Bruins have won because they are really good at possessing the puck, they have an incredibly strong and yes, maybe a bit scary HoF defenseman, some talented scorers and top 3 goaltending. They fight often but I'm not really sure they play much more physical than any other team as is their reputation (beyond that being hard to define). With Chara (and Miller) out they are going to look less physical because he pushes people around in front of the net etc., but they are also going to look worse overall because those are good players. When you're losing you can look "soft" but it doesn't mean that is the reason you're losing.
 
I think this criticism is just lazy narrative from guys who miss Shawn Thornton (Haggerty wrote basically the same article here). 
 
I mean, Lucic basically points out the problem: "[Emotion] wasn’t there [against Montreal]. You can talk about scoring only two goals in two games, but the reason we’ve only scored two goals is because we’re not taking care of things in the defensive zone."

 
I don't think the concept is as tough to understand as you make it sound. When the Bs play "Bruins hockey" they hit all over the ice. If an opponent receives the puck with a Bruin around, he gets checked. If he passes it to another player, that player gets hit. Each check gets finished.
 
There are downsides to this kind of game - IIRC, the Bruins used to lead the league in man games lost to injury pretty often. But the upside was that the Bruins created chances for themselves, and disrupted opportunities for others, with physical play. This isn't the same thing as "consistent skating." It might end up with positive time of possession due to other teams chipping pucks rather than skating with them, but it's different from playing a possession game. And it isn't only about fighting, though teams that play tough tend to fight a fair amount. FWIW, I disagree that "they should probably stop doing this." I preferred Stanley Cup Dale Weise with his head on a swivel to taunting Dale Weise. Canuck Weiss had to watch out for the next check, and knew that those Bruins would make him answer for the taunting.

 

[Toe Nash]

I'm anti-fighting overall, but I especially don't want guys fighting if they are going to hurt themselves doing so or just get trounced every time (Campbell). Crazy idea, I know.
 
The concept of being physical isn't tough to understand, but it's really impossible to quantify. (Well, plus, I just listed how McDonald defines it, so your quibble is with his writing). We have the hit stat, but the teams who generally lead in that are the teams who are bad at puck possession, because you can't hit someone if you have the puck. There's also no guarantee that hitting someone gets you the puck. It probably wears teams down, sure. But so does cycling and keeping the puck in the offensive end.
 
As I said, when you lose, you look bad. Scoring goals and not breaking down defensively are going to help more than hitting people.
 
Intimidating other teams only works if the other team lets themselves be intimidated. The Canadiens don't seem to, and I would argue that the Bruins would do much better against them if they put their heads down and played hockey instead of letting themselves get thrown off their game. 

 

[NickEsasky]

 
I don't think the concept is as tough to understand as you make it sound. When the Bs play "Bruins hockey" they hit all over the ice. If an opponent receives the puck with a Bruin around, he gets checked. If he passes it to another player, that player gets hit. Each check gets finished.
 
There are downsides to this kind of game - IIRC, the Bruins used to lead the league in man games lost to injury pretty often. But the upside was that the Bruins created chances for themselves, and disrupted opportunities for others, with physical play. This isn't the same thing as "consistent skating." It might end up with positive time of possession due to other teams chipping pucks rather than skating with them, but it's different from playing a possession game. And it isn't only about fighting, though teams that play tough tend to fight a fair amount. FWIW, I disagree that "they should probably stop doing this." I preferred Stanley Cup Dale Weise with his head on a swivel to taunting Dale Weise. Canuck Weiss had to watch out for the next check, and knew that those Bruins would make him answer for the taunting.

It's more than just hits though. When the Bruins are at their best it's because they are successfully executing on Claude's system and that means a heavy forecheck to disrupt breakouts and backchecking as well. 

 

[Titoschew]

It's not too hard to figure out.  They went all in last year by pushing most of Iginla's contract to this year and it caused some a cap crunch that led to Boychuk getting traded and them losing a lot of the physicality on the backend, especially since McQuaid hasn't been good and Miller got hurt.

 
To further this point, the side effect from the all in push last season is somewhat compounded by the either lack of organizational depth or the lack of readiness in the organizational depth (based on your opinion).  Not many teams are ready to make up for the loss of a 2/3 Dman, then your clear cut #1, then yet another of the top six.  But, I think this is felt more up front, your #1 C is hampered, you have openings on a wing or two and none of the organizational depth stepped up outside of Griffith.  
 
The narrative of not being physical definitely is a lazy one.  Defensively, I think they're handling about as well as they can all things considered, but I would imagine they're fairly disappointed that offensively almost no one has been able to step in and carve out a spot for themselves, Griffith not withstanding.

 

[behindthepen]

They are definitely less physical on the forwards though, from a forecheck and working the boards perspective.  The 4th line is less physical, and Lucic has toned that part of his game down, while Griffiths is no Iginla or Horton from that standpoint. 
 
If you look at the forwards they've drafted, they have not targeted guys that look like Lucic for sure.

 

[Zososoxfan]

I may be [very] off base here, since I haven't watched a ton of games this season, but Clode mentioned last year that teams usually only peak once a year. Could Clode be trying to run the marathon a little more strategically this year considering the B's peaked a month or so early last year, or are the other factors being discussed more prominent?

 

[TSC]

I wonder if bringing up Camara for Gagne's spot on the team would be a net positive all thing considered.

 

[mwonow]

It's more than just hits though. When the Bruins are at their best it's because they are successfully executing on Claude's system and that means a heavy forecheck to disrupt breakouts and backchecking as well. 

 
True, and I almost went back to add something along these lines to my last post. The forecheck has been a really important part of Bruins hockey for a long time. Move the puck into the zone, pin the other team deep, try to work it out front for a quick shot...that's much more common than a nifty rush with 2-3 passes ending in a clear shot for a forward.
 
 

They are definitely less physical on the forwards though, from a forecheck and working the boards perspective.  The 4th line is less physical, and Lucic has toned that part of his game down, while Griffiths is no Iginla or Horton from that standpoint. 
 
If you look at the forwards they've drafted, they have not targeted guys that look like Lucic for sure.

 
That's my impression as well, and I'm not at all sure that it's a better approach.