Boston Bruins
“That’s what good teams do. They don’t complain. They just work.”
Marco Sturm got the good news on Tuesday ahead of puck drop in St. Louis.
After missing five straight games due to injury, David Pastrnak was cleared to return to the ice.
Then came the tough decisions for Boston’s head coach when it came to carving out a spot for his franchise winger.
The logical choice for Sturm would be to slot Pastrnak back into his usual perch atop Boston’s top line next to Morgan Geekie and Elias Lindholm.
But, the emergence of several other forwards across Boston’s depth presented an interesting conundrum for Sturm as far as how best to incorporate a 60-goal scorer like Pastrnak back into the lineup.
Despite Pastrnak’s standing as a top-line talent, a reworked first line of Geekie, Lindholm, and Alex Steeves was carving up defenses during his five-game absence. A former AHL regular in Steeves scored five goals in his previous six games, while Geekie posted nine points while Pastrnak was stuck on the shelf.
Disrupting a second line of Pavel Zacha, Viktor Arvidsson, and Casey Mittelstadt also wasn’t a palatable option for Sturm, not with Boston outscoring foes, 11-6, during that trio’s 166 minutes of 5-on-5 reps together.
Instead, Sturm chose to incorporate Pastrnak back into the lineup … on a third line next to 21-year-old Fraser Minten and 23-year-old Marat Khusnutdinov.
In the ongoing reshuffle, Sturm also bumped both Tanner Jeannot and Mark Kastelic down to the fourth line next to Sean Kuraly.
It was a sizable gamble for Sturm.
Beyond slotting Pastrnak further down the depth chart than his normal pedigree, Sturm was breaking up a grouping of Minten, Kastelic, and Jeannot that had functioned as his shutdown line for more than a month.
“I went with my guts a little bit,” Sturm said on NESN postgame of his lineup decisions. “And I thought that that lineup we had today gave us the best chance.”
Fair to say, Sturm’s lineup tweaks paid off in a major way.
Boston’s reworked third and fourth lines did most of the heavy lifting on Tuesday against the Blues, scoring a combined four goals en route to 5-2 win — Boston’s third in a row.
While Pastrnak recorded a pair of helpers in his return to game action, it was his new center in Minten who doled out most of the damage with his first two-goal game in the NHL ranks.
“Definitely a bit of an adjustment,” Minten said of playing with Pastrnak. “But we’re all trying to play within the same structure here, so it makes it easy to have different linemates and just know that those guys are gonna make really good plays.”
Further down the lineup, Kastelic buried a pair of goals on a relentless checking unit that finished with 12 total hits in the win.
In total, the Minten and Kuraly lines logged 20:53 of 5-on-5 ice time during Tuesday’s game against St. Louis. Over that extended stretch of action, the Bruins outscored the Blues, 4-1, and held a commanding 13-4 edge in high-danger scoring chances generated.
As unorthodox as it might be for Pastrnak to skate on a line with a pair of youngsters, Sturm has unearthed some success when putting his best forward next to Minten and Khusnutdinov.
In that trio’s slim 13:10 of 5-on-5 reps this season, Boston has outscored teams, 3-1.
“We’ve got to limit his time a little bit,” Sturm said of incorporating Pastrnak back into the lineup. “But also — I needed two guys who could skate with him. That’s the thing. They need a few games to get going. And I thought with Mints and Kuz — they’re young kids. They have fresh legs.”
“Just three young kids playing together,” Pastrnak added of playing with his linemates. “It’s fun.”
Sturm’s decision to distribute depth across his lineup created a balanced attack for Boston.
It was a testament to the effectiveness of Boston’s fourth line that it was Kuraly who logged the most ice time among Bruins forwards at 16:00, with no skater recording less than 13 minutes of reps in the win.
“It is definitely just really fun playing hockey right now,” Kastelic said. “It doesn’t really matter who I am playing with or where in the lineup you are. Everybody is valued here, so that’s the biggest thing. Just having a blast right now.”
It remains to be seen if Pastrnak will remain in his current spot on the third line moving forward.
But, it creates a good problem for Sturm to tackle, much as he did ahead of puck drop when it came to juggling a forward corps that continues to punch above its weight.
“For me, it’s all about character,” Sturm said. “That’s what we have in this room. Some guys had to go down a line, and they didn’t complain at all. They just got the job done today, just like Kast and Jeannot. And that’s what good teams do. They don’t complain. They just work.”
Sign up for the Today newsletter
Get everything you need to know to start your day, delivered right to your inbox every morning.
