Bruins, Avalanche Among Contenders Not Scoring
See how that goal light is turned on? That’s kind of important to do in the NHL. You can’t win if you don’t score. Someone apparently forgot to tell a few preseason favorites that the biscuit goes IN the basket.
Today the Bruins and Avalanche played the first ever “Power Outage Classic” in Denver. Boston came into the game having scored a total of three goals in three games. The B’s may be known for their grit but Loui Erickson and Patrice Bergeron have produced at a high level in this league and their slow start, among others, is doing the team no favors. Not to be outdone Avs coach Patrick Roy may be one more shutout against away from calling up Bob Hartley and screaming at him again just to feel better. Colorado is likely twitching at the thought of seeing young Wild goaltender Darcy Kuemper anytime soon after being served a pair of bagels to open the year. While the Avalanche may be able to point to the loss of Paul Stastny to the St. Louis Blues as a culprit, that won’t hold water for long. And the Bruins could certainly lament the lost production from Jerome Iginla but, as noted above, the Avs aren’t exactly tearing up the league.
Remarkably these teams are not still playing in the 1,305th round of a 0-0 shootout as Daniel Briere ended the game with 0.4 seconds to go, putting the Avalanche (1-2) into the win column by a 2-1 count over the Bruins (1-3). After todays result both teams are still the worst two in the league in total goals for. And while most of the league has played two games, this was the third contest for the Avalanche and the fourth for the Bruins. Yikes!
Speaking of struggling one of the dark horse teams picked to challenge for the Western Conference crown was the Dallas Stars. Well these stars are certainly not shooting, at least not at a high percentage. While not a big sample size (two games) it’s still a bit surprising to see a team with Tyler Seguin, Jamie Benn and Jason Spezza among others open the season with only three goals in those two games. Dallas is currently also in the bottom five in the league in goals for.
By contrast, Corey Perry has outscored seven TEAMS so far this season. Apparently the trick is to schedule the Buffalo Sabres, whom lead the league in goalies with neck sunburn and are on pace to give up a spastic 383 goals this season. Perry victimized said Sabres today for one goal in a 5-1 victory.
It’s a pretty small sample size to make any long lasting judgements from. But if these teams are still not scoring in another week or two it will become a lot more interesting to see how coaching and GM’s tweak lineups using call ups, healthy scratches or even trades. I can’t see any of these three teams really making substantial moves. It’s far more likely they will figure it out sooner rather than later with changes in line combinations or in the starting lineup, as the Bruins did today by reinserting David Krejci without much success.
One suggestion to help these teams and their players could be to spend more time reading our site. They would have noticed quite the preseason pep talk from my colleague Andreas, which they can revisit by clicking here.
Just trying to help.