BOSTON — After Monday’s 4-3 loss to the Panthers, Bruins coach Jim Montgomery criticized his team’s effort after losing too many one-on-one battles against one of the league’s best teams.
After Tuesday’s practice, he challenged them again.
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“Especially this early in the year, you’re gonna have times in the season where you’re going to go like 3-6-1 in 10 games,” Montgomery said. “You gotta find ways to get out of it. But right now, it’s the effort level, the consistency of our effort level over chemistry that has hurt, and then that really affects execution.”
Montgomery was asked specifically about Charlie Coyle, who is scoreless through four games. The second line of Coyle, Morgan Geekie and Brad Marchand has yet to find any offensive consistency as a unit.
“Charlie Coyle looks like he’s not up to speed right now, but he’ll get there,” Montgomery said. “He’s a veteran player that we’ve relied on in so many areas and I don’t have concerns about Charlie. He’ll get to where he needs to be.”
Coyle agreed with Montgomery’s assessment for the team as a whole and him individually.
“I think he’s right. There’s some games — mostly the games we lost — where we’re kind of hesitant a little bit. We’re not on our toes, and then we’re not first at battles. When you’re late to battles, it’s hard to win most of them,” he said. “We’ve got to be on our toes. We’ve got to be ready to go in the corners, in front of the net, wherever the battle is, right off the pace. That’s the first one.
“I’ve got to be inside more, want the puck a little more, too,” he added. “Sometimes you feel like you’re chasing the game a little bit, and if you do it for a certain amount of time, sometimes you kind of switch things up when you shouldn’t. And it’s not lack of effort, lack of this. It’s just, sometimes you got to simplify. I’ve got to simplify it right now. Just play with my body, using my body down low, winning puck battles and taking the puck to the net. I feel like I’ve been chasing a little bit in that regard. I think that’s something our whole team can do. But me, personally, that’s when I get going, and I need to initiate myself more to do that.”
David Pastrnak echoed Coyle’s approach.
“It starts with the details. You don’t look for the home runs. Start with the battles, start with the details,” he said. “Make sure the compete level is there and you’re winning battles. And then the rest will come usually. So we haven’t played our great hockey yet. We’re still in a pretty good spot. We got two wins. Was it deserved? Was not. It doesn’t matter, you know, we got two wins. It’s hard to win this league. So we just have to make sure we keep getting better every, every game.”
