Orange Is the New Red, White, and Blue: Isles Have Replaced Caps As Bruins' Kryptonite

Courtesy of Bruce Bennett/Getty Images

Stop me if you've heard this before: the Boston Bruins lost a game to the New York Islanders.

In a normal year, these in-season struggles against the Isles wouldn't be such a big deal. After all, even if they were divisional rivals, they'd still only be playing four games against each other. But a whopping eight matchups with the Islanders this season, with all five of the games played so far coming in as losses, is a pretty good sample size to conclude that the Islanders are, indeed, the Bruins' new daddy.

And who could forget their old one: the Washington Capitals, who once held a 14-game win streak against the Bs that wasn't snapped until 2019. But is this new losing streak really the same? In those days, the losses to the Caps seemed more like a mental issue, with a years-long reputation and the daunting task of playing against of ex-Washington goaltender Braden Holtby looming in their heads every game. Instead, these recent losses to the Islanders seem like more of a systemic struggle than a mental one.

It's no secret that the Bruins have been dealing with issues on offense this season. They rank fifth-to-last in goals for even while they host the league's best defense. The first line of Marchand, Bergeron, and Pastrnak seems to have lost a bit of its spark, and the bottom three lines continue to have little impact despite Bruce Cassidy's mixing and matching. And, as it just so happens, the Islanders are a historically defense-first team with a brick wall in net.

Let's make a bit more sense of the Bruins' offensive performance with some numbers. Some of the issues I've heard many people complain about are: the volume of shots being taken, the quality of the shots, and the lack of finishing on shots. (For the purpose of this article I would love to also talk about zone time, but I am yet to find any public data on it.) How do the Bruins stack up in these categories, both quantitatively and relative to other teams?

First up, shot volume: believe it or not, the Bruins actually rank fourth-highest in the league for shots taken per game, sitting at 31.6. Yes, it's true. All those times you screamed at the TV for them to stop passing so much? Turns out "just shooting" isn't doing them much good, either. And barring that one game against the Rangers where they shot the puck only 18 times, this makes sense when you think about it: we see them throw the puck on net a lot. It's just not when we want them to.

Which brings me to the next category: quality of shots. According to Natural Stat Trick, they are third-last in high-danger scoring chances at all strengths (272), as well as being dead last in this statistic at 5-on-5. They are also tied for last in 5-on-5 high-danger goals (21) with - sigh - the Buffalo Sabres. This implies that the Bruins are infrequently shooting the puck from quality locations or at the right time. I've certainly felt frustration at how often they opt to pass the puck back to the blue line for a low-danger shot on net by the defenseman, or when the forwards choose to hover outside the faceoff circles instead of moving to the slot. And, when they do finally get going in the slot and in front of the net? That's when they choose to pass. Unbearable.

So, when the question is, "Should they be shooting more?" the answer is both yes and no. The solution to their problem is not to simply take a shot no matter what - that's what causes the abundance of low-quality chances. It's also not to just look for the perfect play - that's what causes them to pass up high (enough) -quality chances.

I'd argue that the biggest thing they need to work on right now is the location on the ice that they are taking their shots from. Keeping the puck down low and in around the net is something they haven't done consistently, and they often fall back into the comfortable - and predictable - pattern of getting the puck back to the defensemen and out of danger. They're trying to play keepaway and the puck possession game, but perhaps they need to worry less about how much time the puck spends on their blades of their sticks, and more about closing the distance between the puck and the net.

The last point, the lack of finish, is most likely a result of the previous two points. It's hard to put the puck in the net when the volume of high-danger chances is so low. Yes, it's frustrating when they can't pot any goals on their breakaways, but this kind of scoring isn't really the recipe to long-term success anyway. I'd much rather have a team that can fight down low, keep sustained pressure around the net, and create second, third, and fourth chances off of a shot.

All in all, the Islanders are built to expose these kinds of flaws in the Bruins' offense. They are not in the Bruins' heads like the Capitals perhaps were; they are simply the better team in every matchup against Boston.

Yes, it's easy to just say, "Shoot more pucks from the slot." Practicing it is much harder. But if the Bs are going to turn things around in their final three games against NYI and fix their offensive woes, they need to look deeper into how their current schemes on offense are not good enough to keep up with formidable teams like the Isles and any future playoffs opponent. With the season moving fast and seeding implications approaching, they have no time to waste.