6-2 loss to the Rangers on Friday<\/a>].\u201d<\/p>\nThe Black Friday matinee visit here by the Rangers found the Bruins trailing, 4-0, after two periods, their largest deficit this season at the 40:00 mark. As Sturm said in the light of the next day, the game was over at that point, though the Bruins managed to pare the deficit back to 4-2 before surrendering a pair late in the period.<\/p>\n
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Too much time spent in their own end, particularly the last two games, in part translated to being wildly outshot, 80-35, by the Islanders and Rangers.<\/p>\n
Headed into the matchup with the Red Wings, the Bruins also were in a deep funk on the power play \u2014 a season-high four consecutive games without a strike. They were placed on the advantage only seven times amid the four-game freeze-out.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the four opponents during the Bruins\u2019 dry spell were awarded a power play 18 times, connecting for three goals.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought we were fine, a 2-0 game,\u201d mused Sturm, reflecting on Friday\u2019s loss and the impact of the Rangers going on the power play three times, compared to only one time for the Bruins. \u201cAll of a sudden, we take a penalty. We killed off a penalty, then take another one \u2014 and the game was over. When you are stuck in your own end \u2026 you can\u2019t draw penalties. So that\u2019s something, we just have to be better.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bruins broke their power-play drought in the win over the Wings. Morgan Geekie\u2019s second goal of the night came on the man-advantage. The Bruins were 1 for 2 when man up, while the Red Wings went 0 for 5. In the last five games, Bruins\u2019 opponents have gone on the power play 23 times compared to nine for the Black and Gold. <\/p>\n
David Pastrnak perennially has been the club\u2019s No. 1 power-play threat. Injured on Wednesday night, in the closing moments of a 3-1 win against the Islanders in Elmont, N.Y., Pastrnak on Saturday was sidelined for a second straight game. <\/p>\n
Pastrnak, who suited up for all 82 games each of the last three seasons, last connected on the man advantage on Nov. 13, game No. 19 of the season. Their only other strikes on the advantage, headed into game No. 27 on Saturday, were by Viktor Arvidsson, Ryan Tufte, and Geekie (two).<\/p>\n
Despite their struggles of late, the power play has been a strong, reclaimed asset for much of the season. Even with the recent struggles, the Bruins awoke Saturday ranked No. 5 in the league with a 24.7 percent success rate.<\/p>\n
Since becoming one of the game\u2019s elite goal scorers, beginning with his first 30-goal season in 2016-17, Pastrnak has scored 125 times on the power play. Through Friday games, that ranked third in the league over that time, behind only Leon Draisaitl (163) and Alex Ovechkin (132).<\/p>\n
Without identifying the nature of his injury \u2014 be it upper body, lower body or metaphysical \u2014 the Bruins on Saturday morning placed defenseman Henri Jokiharju on the injured reserve list, joining IR gold club members Charlie McAvoy, Matej Blumel and Jordan Harris. The latter two have been designated long-term IR,, their injuries to keep them sideled for weeks or months . . . McAvoy skated briefly on Garden ice prior to the rest of the group. He was dinged by a shot to the mouth Nov. 15 during a 3-2 win at Montreal. Sturm offered no timeline in regard to his return or anyone else on the lengthy injured list . . . Jeremy Swayman was back in the Bruins net, his first action since making a career-high 44 stops in Wednesday\u2019s win on Long Island. Swayman made 24 saves and stopped all three shootout bids he faced in the win over the Red Wings. It improved his record to 11-6-0, which included a sizzling nine-game stretch in which he went 7-2-0 with a 2.19 goals against average and a .936 save percentage. <\/p>\n
Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at kevin.dupont@globe.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s normally good to be home, particularly during the holiday season. Yet there always can be too much…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[19859,385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-324479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-bruins","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}