By Joe Haggerty
CSNNE.com
WILMINGTONThe Bruins are 0-for-13 on the power play dating back to the Saturday afternoon when Marc Savard went down in Colorado, and those adjustments along with Jordan Carons role within the lineup became very clear after Tuesdays practice at Ristuccia Arena.The Bruins moved Mark Recchi to the point of the top power-play unit with Zdeno Chara on the other side. Patrice Bergeron and Milan Lucic were camped down low, with David Krejci working the half-wall position normally occupied by Savard.The second unit had a very different look with Dennis Seidenberg and Steve Kampfer working the points, and both Brad Marchand and Gregory Campbell joining Michael Ryder off the half-wall.
The point, according to coach Claude Julien, was to add some grit and toughness to the power play while also placing Recchis calming influence at one of the point spots on the top PP unit.Its a function of still trying to make our power play better, said Julien. While our last game was one when you could say you werent pleased with the power play, we had a hard time getting it into the zone and we lost our share of battles once we did get it in.Weve kind of tweaked our personnel around and hope that we get better in that regard. Thats something that since the beginning of the year weve really been working hard to turn around to make it better. We put a plan together, but you have to make sure if youre one of our best players that youre at your best.The Bruins are tied with the Ottawa Senators for 20th in the NHL with a 16.8 percent success rate on the power play, and its seemed that all year the man advantage has had problems achieving consistencyand at no point has really felt like a dangerous unit ready to strike at any second.With that in mind, it appears Julien is taking a bit of the roll up the sleeves approach and will instead put a couple of grinders out on the second PP unit to force the puck into the net rather than try finessing it in.
Conspicuous by his absence on either power play unit is Nathan Horton, who only got some PP time in practice when Johnny Boychuks chip attempt caught Bergeron in the chin.Were one of those teams that continue to work on that part of the game, said Julien, who admitted that the Bruins will open Wednesdays game vs. Montreal with the PP alignments from practice. What you saw is something youll see. Maybe we need a little bit more grit and a few more shots from the back end and maybe itll work with that.We feel like weve had some issues taking pucks off the wall near the blue line and making plays under pressure, and Recchi is one of those guys thats been pretty good in that area the few times weve used him there. If we dont try it, then well never know.Joe Haggerty can be reached at jhaggerty@comcastsportsnet.com. Follow Joe on Twitter at http:twitter.comHackswithHaggs