Kaberle’s slick passing has been as good as advertised and he’s even come up with some surprising defensive work. His block of a Matt Cooke bid at an empty net in the final minute on Saturday is just one example of that, with Kaberle’s play helping the Bruins salvage a point when David Krejci forced overtime with a goal seconds later.
But the No. 1 area where the Bruins expected immediate dividends was on the power play, and thus far there’s been no tangible return on the sizeable investment they made to add Kaberle. The Bruins remain just 18th in the league on the man-advantage with a 17.1 percent success rate (37-216). They are just 1 of 17 since Kaberle joined the team, with no goals on 12 chances in the last six games.
“Well, I can’t stand here and say we’re really happy with it because we’re not getting the end results, but the thing is that we have been moving the puck better,” Bruins coach Claude Julien said recently. “We’re spending a lot of time in the other end. That part of our power play has improved. So you hope that by continuing to do that, the finishing touch will come.”
The Bruins have looked much better on the man-advantage with Kaberle. The puck movement is crisper. The possession time in the offensive zone is improved. There are more scoring chances. Everything is there but the goals.
“I thought we had a few good chances,” Kaberle said after Monday’s practice. “We hit a few posts. The only thing we’re missing is goals. We’ve scored only one in the last six [actually seven] games and we have to get more. Special teams are always a key no matter what, in the regular season and in the playoffs. So you’re looking forward to score some goals on that and hopefully we’ll get some chances and we can capitalize on it.”
How do they do that? Kaberle thinks it’s a matter of sticking with what they’re doing now, that those chances will eventually produce the goals they desire.
“You don’t want to change it just because it wasn’t working with the goals,” Kaberle said. “We move the puck pretty well. The only thing missing is the goals, so we have to stick with it, maybe get more traffic [in front] and bury those rebounds there.”
Fellow defenseman Dennis Seidenberg also sees the positives in what the Bruins are doing on the power play.
“I think we’re getting shots on net and we’re creating chances,” Seidenberg said. “If you don’t score you want to get momentum out of it at least. It’s been looking good and we just have to keep doing what we’re doing. Zee [Zdeno Chara] had like 10 one-timers on that one shift [against Ottawa last Tuesday]. If he gets a little lucky that puck is in there, and sometimes on the power play you need luck. We can’t do more than trying to get shots on net and guys in front and hope for the best.”
The Bruins don’t want to rely just on luck, but Julien admitted there is a mental part to power-play success.
“Sometimes it’s about confidence,” Julien said. “Sometimes it’s about working on those aspects. And I think right now we’ve improved in an area that was a major concern, and that was coming up the ice, getting in there and setting things up. And we’ve been able to do that. I think right now we’ve had some really good chances and when you look back at our games and we look at our power play and you look at the opportunities we’ve had, we’ve had even more than we’ve ever had. Except that we got to start capitalizing on those things.”
To do that, Julien recognizes there are still some improvements that need to be made.
“There’s times where we can be a little better and there’s times where you got to give the other goaltender credit for making big saves,” Julien said. “I mean when we were top in our PK, we were good but our goaltender was very good as well. So we got to give everybody credit when it comes to that. So that’s the area I think that we have to improve on and get a little bit better at, is that finishing touch around the net. And that’s an area where we’ve had opportunities, but we haven’t had the results.”
Seidenberg also saw some areas that could be better, even if he’s comfortable overall with how the power play has looked.
“We maybe overpassed a little bit a couple games ago,” Seidenberg said, “but other than that I think everybody knows what’s going on and seems to be doing a good job, despite not scoring.”
But the Bruins can only go so far with a power play that looks pretty but doesn’t produce goals.
