Annotated Box Score: Game One Bruins vs Senators
T6S via our good friends at Buckeye Battle Cry
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It’s been quite some time since I’ve used this format, but with last night’s frustrating 2-1 loss to the Boston Bruins, I’m bringing back the annotated box score.
The format is straightforward and borrowed from
Baseball Prospectus‘ Sam Miller. Select items from last night’s game summary and box score and add some of my own observations.
A.
Considering the Senators entered the game with the league’s 22nd-ranked penalty kill unit, disciplined play and staying out of the box was something that the Senators should emphasize.
So naturally, the team took three penalties in the first period and helped skew everyone’s ice time while killing whatever momentum they were generating at even strength.
Although though the Bruins were buzzing on the power play, the Senators successfully killed every second of the five minutes and 19 seconds that the Bruins enjoyed with the man advantage. Thank Craig Anderson and his trusty goal post for that.
B.
After scoring just one goal in the 21 games that led up to Ottawa’s regular season finale in Brooklyn versus the New York Islanders, Bobby Ryan has goals in back-to-back games for the first time since December.
His six shots on goal were a team high, but his possession numbers were equally fantastic.
He looked energized and engaged with the game and hopefully that’s a sign of more production to come. With the Jean-Gabriel Pageau line matching up against Patrice Bergeron’s, it’s imperative for Ottawa’s other lines to create and produce away from what’s arguably the league’s most dominant possession line.
C.
The goal by Frank Vatrano was a microcosm of what’s ailed the Senators all season long: the blue line’s struggles to move the puck led to an extended shift within the defensive zone and culminated with the game-tying goal.
The goal was inevitable with the way that the Senators were sitting on their lead.
After taking the play to Boston in the second period and putting 12 shots on goal to the Bruins’ none, the Senators played passively in the third period. Rather than take the attack to the Bruins and their already thin blue line that was missing Torey Krug and Brandon Carlo before Colin Miller left the game with an apparent knee injury, the Senators looked like a team in the regular season that was content taking the point and then rolling the dice on overtime or the shootout.
It didn’t help this shift was exacerbated by Craig Anderson’s inability to glove and freeze a puck that deflected off of his trapper, trickled down the back of the net and allowed the shift to extend. I don’t blame Anderson for the goal, but it was a fluky play that fans can curse if the rest of the series does not go Ottawa’s way.
D.
David Pastrnak was all over the ice last night.
The game summary doesn’t do his play justice. Although he wound up grabbing a secondary assist on Brad Marchand’s game-winning goal, first period, Pastrnak could have had three goals by the end of the first period.
The Senators struggled to contain the Marchand-Bergeron-Pastrnak line all night and although Boucher used the Hoffman-Pageau-Pyatt line as their preferred match up, the coach might want to shake up his lines or reassess whether that’s the trio that he wants to keep going back to.
At five-on-five last night, the Bergeron line generated more than 70-percent of the Corsi events.
I don’t want to take anything away from this Bruins’ line, but when the Senators are starved for goals, it doesn’t make sense to have Mike Hoffman’s skill set be marginalized when his line continually gets buried within the defensive zone. The problem is only compounded that much more when the Phaneuf-Ceci pairing was out there with them.
It might make more sense to use Alexandre Burrows or Viktor Stalberg on Pageau’s wings or just go strength on strength and have Stone replace Pyatt on that line.
E.
I mentioned earlier that the penalties in the first period may have skewed everyone’s allotted ice time, but it’s weird that six other forwards had more ice time than someone who the Senators’ analytics department rated as the Senators’ best forward.
F.
One of the things that I completely overlooked in my first round preview of this Senators/Bruins series was the health of Erik Karlsson.
I presumed that Karlsson was healthy and that his return to the lineup would have a bigger impact.
It’s not like Karlsson was bad last night mind you, but he wasn’t his noticeable self either. I guess that’s the problem with generational players, you can them for granted and just expect them to be at their best all the time. Considering how the other defensive pairings leave something to be desired, the Senators need more from Karlsson.
If last night’s all he is capable of providing given his health situation, the Senators will be in tough to advance. If there is a silver lining however, his ice-time increased with each period the Senators played (7:02, 8:02 and 9:00).
G.
Although the Phaneuf-Ceci duo has been rightfully panned for their performance as a pairing this season, it’s interesting to note that their ice time diminished as the game progressed.
Maybe that’s a function of the shorthanded ice time in the first period or the coaching staff’s recognition that they spend a disproportionate amount of time getting trapped in their own end.
Having spent the better part of the season playing together, I don’t anticipate the coaching staff shaking things up now, but I wonder at some point when the media will rightfully question the coaching staff about splitting them up. It’s not working. It hasn’t worked. The trade to bring Phaneuf into the fold hasn’t helped Ceci’s development at all, so when does the experiment end?
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