The Bruins at the Halfway Point (Part 1)

With your Boston Bruins (mostly) off for the All-Star break, the corporate overlords here at The Morning Skate have been on me to stop stirring up shit and get back to work regarding the Boston Bruins. I’ve been getting the whole Bill Lumbergh experience from Ked as he’s always looking over my shoulder with the ol’: “I’m gonna need you to do some work on the Bruins, mmmmkay”.

Well here you go. I’ve broken down the statistics, crunched the numbers and I’m completely fully mostly kinda prepared to give all of these beauties a letter grade on their first halves. Per usual, this blog got away from me so I’m going to split it in half. I’m going to work from the net out, as that’s the way you build a championship team: So here comes the D and the netminders.

Let’s get into it.

I feel The Huggy Bears^TM have swapped their depth chart positions this year. Part of this was due to Ullmark’s injury, part of this was due to Swayman getting the All-Star nod: but a big part of it to me seems to be the matchups. Sway just gets the tougher teams, and in almost every occasion he will rise to the challenge. Statistically, if you look league wide, Swayman is 2nd in the NHL for save percentage, but Adin Hill at #1 has 10 fewer starts. Ullmark is at 11th; but again, there’s 6 goalies ahead of him with a lot less work on the season. Watching the games you feel that either of them will make the tough save, but they both have been victimized by the late period goal. As a tandem, I have them 2nd in the league behind WPG’s Connor Hellebuyck (Vezina winner: book it) and Laurent Brossoit; but Hellebuyck has been carrying the load for the Jets with Brossoit only making 12 starts.

Grade combined A-
Swayman A
Ullmark B+

Defense:

Charlie McAvoy and Brandon Carlo
Simply put, these two are the two best D on the team. Now you’ll immediately hear the echoes through Facebook from the slobs covered in Cheeto dust complaining that Carlo is soft; but he has grown into one of the most reliable defensemen in the NHL. He leads the team in shorthanded TOI, is 3rd amongst the D in hits/60 (yup, check the advanced stats Skippy) and should eclipse his career high in points this year. And for Chuckie Bright Lights? The only knock on him at this point is that he hasn’t been awarded a Norris yet (your going to tell me you’d rather have Karlsson on your top pair against Crosby or Matthews? GTFOH). McAvoy should also set a new high for points while leading the team in TOI and is currently 2nd in takeaway differential. He plays big minutes in bunches and is the future of the Black and Gold. Plus he loves to bring the boom (I can watch Aho get run over on a loop all day long)
Grade for both: A-

Hampus Lindholm, Parker Wortherspoon and Matt Lohrei

I put these three in a bunch because based on mitigating factors, I feel they’re playing at the same level. That’s great for Wortherspoon and Lohrei, not so hot for Lindholm. On the eyeball test, Lindholm isn’t having a great year. Could be that he’s been with a rotating cast of partners and last year he was mostly with McAvoy. Could be that the adrenaline of the trade and the historic season has settled down and this is more of what he will be moving forward. He’s 2nd on the team in both total and short-handed TOI and is right in the middle of the pack with takeaway differential. His career high in points last year were 20 more than any of his previous and I think he’s settling in as a 2-3 defenseman on the squad. While that is all not so great for Lindholm’s grading, it is awesome for Lohrei and Wotherspoon’s. For these 2 to have similar numbers to Lindholm’s is fantastic due to their price tags and ages. These 2 COMBINED have a $1.7M cap hit which is a little less than a quarter of Lindholm’s. They are both on their ELC’s and can go to Providence without having to clear waivers. Wotherspoon is the more physical (and right now more reliable) of the pair, while Lohrei has an offensive instinct that you can’t teach. Wotherspoon is averaging over 17mins a game (Lohrei before he went down was at 16:24) and is leading the D in hits per 60. Lohrei has the worst takeaway differential on the team, but also leads the entire roster with blocks per 60 – guilt feeds the legs to get back in the shooting lanes I guess. All 3 of these players I feel are in the same bucket, which is good for the kids but not so much for the vet.
Grade for all 3: B

Matt Grzelcyk and Kevin Shattenkirk
I’m first going to say that I’m not here to bash Grz which is what everyone wants to do all the freaking time. He’s the best skater (probably on the team) on the back end and is adept at avoiding the big hit. He’s got a wicked first step and is awesome with the outlet pass. That all being said, I think the speed and the size of the forwards bearing down on him are starting to add up. His injuries are becoming more frequent and FLA showed last year in the playoffs that a consistent heavy fore-check will make like difficult for the hometown kid. As for Shattenkirk, I was thrilled when they signed him. At that price ($1.05M) for the season? Hell yeah. Put Shatty on 3rd pair minutes, let him walk the line on PP2 (PP1 when you don’t have 4F out there) and let’s see what we can do. That plan was working awesome until injuries started to pile up on the back end (as they always do), and the vet was tasked with top 4 minutes and was exposed a bit. Shattenkirk is savvy enough that he knows positioning and his hockey IQ is off the charts, but the same issue as Grzelcyk, the heavy pounding is going to do him in with bigger minutes. He is 3rd on the D in PP TOI so that’s something, but I’d like to see more than 13 points out of him at this point of the season.
Grade for both: C+

Last up is Derek Forbort.
The big guy has only played 24 games the first half due to injuries (only Wotherspoon has played less) so I’m going to give him an incomplete at this point. I will say that since he’s come back, the B’s penalty kill has looked sharper and everyone kind of slotted into their expected spots on the back end (Lohrei has been the casualty to the Baby B’s but has been lighting it up in Providence). Forbort is still in the top half of the D corp in TOI, blocked shots, giveaways vs. takeaways and as his health improves I expect him to continue to play with the snarl he’s shown the last few years.
Grade: Incomplete

So keep an eye on this space later this week for Part 2 of the mid-season grades and thanks for reading. If you’re really missing hockey talk, our podcast last week covered everything up to the All-Star Break. Give it a try.

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