BOSTON -- The Bruins solved some of their offensive problems with Claude Juliens line-juggling of a few days ago, but now a secondary problem has cropped up.
A secondary scoring problem, that is.
The Bruins have reaped each of their last six goals from David Krejci, Tyler Seguin or Milan Lucic. They have received exactly zero offense from any of the other three forward lines.
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For a team that has always prided itself on overwhelming opponents with wave after wave of depth, the Bruins are top-heavy with their scoring and looking a lot more like the ordinary offenses around the NHL.
Once an opponent needs only to strangle one forward line offensively to hold down a team, they become much easier to stop and contain. Right now, the Bruins are too easy to bottle up and contain offensively, as they were in the 32 loss to the New York Islanders at TD Garden on Saturday afternoon.
Claude Julien attributed some of it to bad luck and some of it to the natural ebb and flow of the season, but also sent out a clarion call for some offensive production outside of the newly pimped out first line.
I think youd like to see a little bit more secondary scoring. But when youre missing guys like Rich Peverley and Nathan Horton, those are guys that, every game, have scoring chances, said Julien. So you just lost two of those, which really takes a lot away from your hockey club.
So you need to rely on guys to do a little bit more, and thats what were pushing our team to do here, is to try and spread out that scoring. We want to not have to put the pressure on the same guys night in, night out.
Patrice Bergeron has only scored goals in one of his last eight games, Brad Marchand scored goals in two of his last 11 games, Chris Kelly has one goal in his last 19 games and Benoit Pouliot has one goal in his last 24 games. The injuries and line-shuffling basically took three balanced, effective scoring lines and tore them asunder with little chance of joining them back together again before the postseason begins.
Lucic has been one of the guys producing for the Bruins as he did with a power play goal in the first period, but he said the most important thing to help the Black and Gold overcome their issues is to hold off on laying blame.
Thats easier said than done, and it will become a moot issue if some of the quiet secondary offensive forces can step up and make themselves heard with opportunity knocking like its Heavens Door.
Its difficult when key guys are out of the lineup. Weve had key guys out of the lineup in the past few seasons and its given an opportunity for other guys to step up, said Lucic. Were not pointing fingers at anyone. I think its a group effort. Everyone has to step up a little bit more and do a little bit more to try to fill that void.
As the Bs power forward said, its time for every member of the Bruins to step up and provide that essential secondary scoring because it appears theres going to be whole lot of Lane MacDermid, Jordan Caron and Michael Hutchinson over the next few weeks.