Over the last half decade or so, the Bruins have consistently been haunted by the same specter. A constant nagging flaw that is brought to the forefront of the franchise with every playoff elimination and been the subject of every offseason sports radio and reddit board rant since the infamous 2015 Draft; Depth Scoring.
Seemingly year after year, each playoff exit could be boiled down to “Nobody showed up except the Bergeron Line”. Every trade deadline move has been fixated around addressing that same issue. It’s been Boston’s own version of Groundhog Day. Maybe this year, maybe this time, they’ll finally figure it out.
They very well could have.
Plaudits are deservingly going all around the Bruins’ organization for their electrifying first half. David Pastrnak is on pace to score 65 goals, Linus Ullmark is an early Vezina candidate and Jim Montgomery has been a grand slam coaching hire. One area in particular where the Bruins have significantly improved has been their scoring depth. Finally the Bruins have consistent and reliable options to light the lamp outside of the usual suspects.
Jake DeBrusk, Pavel Zacha, Hampus Lindholm and Charlie McAvoy are all on pace to shatter their career highs in scoring. David Krejci is nearly a point per game at age 36 coming off a year abroad. Nick Foligno has tripled his goal total from last year (6 vs 2). Trent Frederic has already set a career high in goals scored (9). The only player to dress in ten games who hasn’t scored is Mike Reilly, and he’s been in Providence since November.
All of this combines to power an offense that is scoring at the second highest rate in the league with 3.85 Goals Per Game.
Year after year, the recipe for success in the Stanley Cup has stayed the same: Health, Goaltending and Depth Scoring. The last time the Bruins made a deep run, they got clutch goals from everywhere in the lineup. With the way they are playing now, there very well could be another shot at the dance this coming Spring.
Photo: AP Photo/Michael Dwyer
