David Pastrnak isn’t fretting over his scoring slump against Panthers: ‘It’s just a matter of time it’s going to go in’
"He gets two next game, he's back at a 60 goal pace, right?"
David Pastrnak isn’t going to reinvent the wheel ahead of Game 6 down at FLA Live Arena.
The Bruins’ top sniper isn’t augmenting his approach in the offensive zone, nor is he snapping his twigs and burning them to rid himself of the scoring hex that’s befallen him in this first-round series.
Rather, the 61-goal scorer is going to keep doing what he does best – peppering the net early and often against Sergei Bobrovsky on Friday.
“I can shoot the puck more a little bit,” Pastrnak said on Thursday afternoon. “Get a couple blocked shots, then you try to look for another play to see if somebody else is open. Definitely going with the shooting mindset.”
Through five games against the Panthers, Pastrnak has been limited to two goals and zero helpers. During Boston’s overtime loss to the Panthers on Wednesday night, Pastrnak was held to four shots on goal and was knocked for four giveaways.
As Jim Montgomery noted, two tallies in five games is hardly an irrelevant stat line for most players. But of course, few players have the high-end talent and scoring capabilities that Pastrnak wields whenever he hops over the boards.
“I really liked his habits without the puck yesterday,” Montgomery said of Pastrnak’s showing in Game 5. “And I just know that when his habits without the puck are really good, he’s going to get more opportunities. And I thought he had more opportunities yesterday to do things than in Game 4 in Florida.
“So if he continues along that trend, it’s just a matter of time. In the playoffs, everything gets magnified. And he has two goals in five games. So I am not a great mathematician but is that 40-goal pace — so maybe a 20-goal pace behind — but it’s a small sample size. He gets two next game, he’s back at a 60 goal pace, right? And that’s what we expect of him and that’s what he has shown for us.”
A best-of-seven series against a team with Florida’s defensive faults would seem like an ideal matchup for a player of Pastrnak’s caliber. The Panthers ranked 21st in the NHL during the regular season in goals against per game (3.32). Their penalty kill ranks 23rd overall (76.0).
But so far this series, Florida has devoted plenty of its defensive efforts toward negating Pastrnak, especially by way of a painful blocked shot.
“It’s exactly that. You get two shots blocked in a row from the same spot then obviously the third one you’re trying to look for a better play,” Pastrnak said. “Sometimes it is, sometimes it’s not. It’s up to us or up to me to recognize that. It’s gonna be very simple moving forward for me to have a shooting mentality.”
Pastrnak is no stranger to snapping out of scoring lulls in a hurry. Back in Boston’s Game 2 loss to the Panthers, Pastrnak was limited to just two shots on goal.
Just two days later, he attempted 13 shots on net, seven of which landed against Alex Lyon and Bobrovsky. He capped off his bounce-back showing with a nifty breakaway tally against Alex Lyon in the third period.
Even in Boston’s frustrating Game 5 defeat at TD Garden, the Bruins still held a 33-10 edge in shot attempts during Pastrnak’s 17:43 of 5v5 reps.
The chances have been there for Pastrnak against the Panthers. And given his track record, some of those pucks are inevitably going to find twine.
I’m getting the chances, I feel like. So it’s just a matter of time it’s gonna go in. And it’s going to be tomorrow.”
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