New-Look Soderberg Line Shines in Bruins Loss
David Pastrnak made his NHL debut, Seth Griffith was sent down to the AHL and David Krejci and Chris Kelly remained out along with their captain Zdeno Chara, who was missing his first game against the Penguins in 52 contests.
All these personnel moves and injuries forced head coach Claude Julien to be a little creative with his lineup against a team the B’s are chasing in the conference. One move that paid off was inserting Milan Lucic alongside Carl Soderberg and Loui Eriksson.
After the Bruins trailed 1-0 after the first period, the Lucic-Soderberg-Eriksson line got things going for the Black and Gold to start the second period. On a beautiful sequence that started from Tuukka Rask stonewalling back-to-back shots, Soderberg rushed down the ice then found Eriksson, who served one up to Lucic on the door step to tie the game at 1-1. It was Lucic’s first goal in his last five games.
It could’ve been a bigger night for this line when Soderberg found himself celebrating after scoring a goal which eventually was called back. Julien was still trying to find an explanation.
“Whatever angle they look at, it looked like it went off chest,” Julien said. “I don’t know if they felt it went off Soderberg’s glove. I tried to look at it in slow motion. I’m going to leave that one to somebody else to explain. But again, to me it could’ve gone either way.”
Julien preached that his team needed to show more net front presence against the Canadiens and against the Penguins, and they responded to their head coach’s constructive criticism. The Bruins’ drive to the net was more evident in Lucic’s goal and the traffic in front of Penguins’ goaltender Marc Andre Fleury on Joe Morrow’s first career goal that gave the B’s a brief 2-1 lead in the second period.
“I think we did a better job tonight than ever at driving the net,” Julien said. “We’ve been struggling a bit with that. When you look at Lucic’s first goal, not only did they drive the net, but they stopped in front, so he got a loose puck there and empty net.”
Lucic, who is filling in for Kelly on the Soderberg line, turned in a great effort with Eriksson and Soderberg despite the loss.
“We played a pretty good game,” Lucic said. “We didn’t spend too much time in our own zone and we were able to create a bunch of scoring chances. I think what got better was we were attacking with a lot of speed off the rush and we were strong on the pucks and driving to the front of the net and trying to create chances that way. For myself just on that goal, just driving the net, stopping in front and a great play by Carl (Soderberg) and Loui (Eriksson) to get me the puck there for that first goal.”
Lucic added that he enjoys playing alongside Soderberg due to their similar styles of play.
“He does a really good job of using his big body to protect the puck,” Lucic said. “You’ve seen the player that he has grown into, as far as confidence in all areas of the ice and especially producing offensively he’s becoming a dangerous threat as far as that goes. You saw tonight when we’re working off each other we can be an effective line so we got to take these next three days of practice and keep building that chemistry.”
Eriksson acknowledged he may not be playing alongside Lucic for long, but enjoyed the company tonight.
“I think we’re playing good,” Eriksson said after his team’s tough 3-2 OT loss. “We’re creating chances out there and it’s a big man skating well. It’s almost tough to play against and it’s definitely nice to be playing with him and nice to see him score a goal today.”
Soderberg, who had an efficient game Monday night with the beautiful assist to Lucic as well as his physical play praised his new linemate.
“He’s a great player,” Soderberg said. “He creates a lot of room for us to play our game. He scored too.”
The three combined for one goal, two assists, six shots and a plus-3 rating. Most importantly, they created multiple chances and drove to the net, resulting in production on a team that is decimated by injuries and struggling to light the lamp.
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