Montgomery Looking For 'Puck Pressure'

B's bench boss says his Bruins team needs more of a "relentless attitude' in terms of attacking the puck

BRIGHTON, MA – One thing that’s been clear in the early going is that there hasn’t been quite enough investment from the Boston Bruins when it comes to attacking the puck all over the ice.

That’s something the B’s were looking for entering the season as they hoped to change into a style that’s a little closer to the Florida Panthers in terms of a heavy, frenetic attack that wears down opponents with speed, heaviness and relentlessness.

It certainly hasn’t been there consistently as the Bruins have struggled to a 4-4-1 start to the regular season that admittedly now has them six points behind the Atlantic Division-leading Panthers. The minus-5 goal differential for Boston is second worst in the division behind the Montreal Canadiens, so clearly there are plenty of areas to address as Jim Montgomery attempted to do during a practice where he got animated at times on the ice.

Through all of that, though, Montgomery said that simple “puck pursuit” is the biggest area that needs to improve punctuated by a back-checking drill that the Bruins threw in the middle of Monday’s practice.

"Puck pressure. Our puck pressure last game was best it has been, but it's still not where it needs to be,” said Montgomery. “I would not come close to describing our team as relentless and that's where we want to get to. It’s more forwards working in the offensive zone and the neutral zone so that the defense can have better gaps.

“In the last 15 minutes of the third period [against Toronto], we really backed off and that is not what we want to be. Someone needs to be pressuring the puck. You just can’t let somebody on the other team carry the puck 10 or 15 feet [without pressure]…that should never happen with the way we want to play, and we just need to get better at that. We need to have a relentless pursuit attitude. We did a lot of good things with that in the first two periods, and we had our most Grade-A scoring chances 5-on-5 in a game [this season].”

Clearly puck pursuit is a pretty important part of successful, winning hockey at any level, but the real concern is just how much of this is rooted in straight up effort. It sure sounds like Montgomery is trying to coax urgency and max effort out of a group that hasn’t really been showing that early in the season, and clearly has been playing an undisciplined brand of hockey as well.

There is still time for all of this to change and improve just a couple of weeks into the regular season, but there continues to be signs that the Bruins players collectively aren’t responding to the message like they should be at the start of a hockey season with some pretty high expectations.