Earlier we gave you four trends that are cause for optimism for the rest of the Boston Bruins season, but not everything is perfect in bean town.
For each positive trend, the Bruins seem to have an Achilles heal that may stand out by the end of the season.
Here are three trends that the Bruins through five games that don’t bode well for the Boston Bruins.
Injuries
The Bruins are only five games into the season, but they already seem to have been bitten by the injury bug.
Torey Krug is just one of multiple Bruins to have missed at least one game at the midpoint of October.
David Backes has been unable to practice with an unknown virus and Noel Acciari was placed on IR after fracturing his finger.
Sunday Night’s loss to the Vegas Golden Knights added to an already large injury report. Patrice Bergeron was a last-minute scratch and Ryan Spooner exited the game with a lower body injury.
Hockey is one of the toughest sports out there and injuries are almost guaranteed, but this many this early in the year is alarming.
The power play
The Bruins haven’t been able to muster up much offense while on the man advantage so far.
In Sunday’s loss to Vegas, the Bruins failed to score on their three power play opportunities.
The Bruins power play also struggled in both of their losses to the Colorado Avalanche last week.
If the Bruins want to breakout on offense, it all starts with finding the back of the net when you have the numbers on the ice.
Penalties
Five games into the season and the Bruins are taking dumb penalties ….. a lot of them too.
They’ve committed 20 penalties thus far which is an average of four per game. In layman’s terms, that’s too many.
Boston’s penalty kill has been pretty solid thus far, but if they keep playing with fire, something’s gonna go wrong eventually.
The Bruins are young so committing a lot of penalties is to be expected, but it’s something Cassidy is going to have to fix.
