BOSTON — Employing on-the-job training doesn’t always translate to immediate success, but circumstances may dictate the Boston Bruins don’t have enough time to wait for results in the Eastern Conference First Round against the Buffalo Sabres.<\/p>\n
Exhibit A is the Bruins’ “Kid Line” of James Hagens<\/a>, Fraser Minten<\/a> and Marat Khusnutdinov<\/a>, all of whom are making their Stanley Cup Playoff debuts in this best-of-7 series Boston trails 2-1, with Game 4 at TD Garden on Sunday (2 p.m. ET; HBO MAX, truTV, TNT, NESN, MSG-B, SN, TVAS).\u00a0<\/p>\n The players that make up Boston’s third line have failed to register a point through the first three games, and Bruins coach Marco Sturm has kept the unit together while Alex Steeves<\/a>, Lukas Reichel<\/a> and Michael Eyssimont<\/a>\u00a0have been healthy scratches.\u00a0<\/p>\n When asked if he would consider lineup changes for Game 4, Sturm did not rule out the possibility.<\/p>\n \u201cMy job is to put the best guys on the ice who I think gives us the best chance, and if somebody else can do that then we\u2019ll do that,\u201d Sturm said Friday. \u201cToday\u2019s not the day (to decide) yet and we\u2019ll see how it goes (Saturday at practice) and go from there.<\/p>\n \u201cConsistency is the hardest part for those young kids \u2013 it is. You need the experience. You need those games to go through it and that\u2019s where we\u2019re at right now. Can they stay consistent? There was a little drop (in Game 3). There were some individual mistakes, but they just have to try to stay consistent. It\u2019s hard, especially in the playoffs.\u201d<\/p>\n Minten, 21, has 35 points (17 goals, 18 assists) playing in all 82 regular-season games for Boston, and Khusnutdinov, 23, who saw some time on the first line, had 33 points (15 goals, 18 assists) in 77 games. Hagens, the Bruins’ top prospect, signed a three-year, entry-level contract on April 8 following his sophomore season at Boston College, and is trying to make an immediate impact in the postseason.<\/p>\n Whether he’ll have the chance to so do is to be determined.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll see,\u201d Sturm said about Hagens remaining in the lineup. \u201cWe\u2019re in the process of going through the game again from Thursday night and we\u2019ll see. So far, he\u2019s been really good. He gives us everything he has, and he made more mistakes probably last game than he\u2019s done in the past, so we\u2019ll see. We\u2019ll analyze (Game 3) and go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOSTON — Employing on-the-job training doesn’t always translate to immediate success, but circumstances may dictate the Boston Bruins…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-628528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}