Kukla's Korner Hockey

Kukla's Korner Hockey

Claude Julien Goes To The Drawing Board

09/13/2015 at 7:33am EDT

from Fluto Shinzawa of the Boston Globe,

This season, the weak-side wing will be free to overload toward the strong side instead of staying wide. If a defenseman goes D-to-D to his partner, he will then advance to the net-front area rather than staying at home for a reverse.

Julien believes these adjustments will quicken the breakout’s tempo, provide more exiting options, force teams to retreat, and allow the Bruins to play at a higher tempo with numbers in transition. In theory, the teams applying the 2-1-2 forecheck against the Bruins last season will now be scrambling to catch up, perhaps at risk of being outnumbered up the ice.

In 2014-15, the Bruins finished with close to the same number of scoring chances they recorded the season before. In 2013-14, the Bruins won the Presidents’ Trophy and had the league’s third-best offense. But they tumbled to 22d last season because they couldn’t turn those chances into goals.

Julien’s objective, via the breakout changes, is to turn misses into goals by improving the pace through center ice, gaining cleaner entries into the offensive zone, and making opponents more anxious.

“If they see four men and they have to back off, that’s going to give us a great chance off the rush,” Julien said between drawing scribbles on his whiteboard in his Ristuccia Arena office. “We’ll have that fourth guy. We can have that middle drive, shoot at the net for a rebound, maybe hit that weak-side D coming on the other side if that lane’s open and the guy’s driving. Or we can hit a trailer with the fourth guy coming up on the attack. There’s a good chance it will be a centerman or the winger that originally did the breakout. He’s coming in late, so he may be that fourth guy coming in. We’re going to fill all three lanes with that fourth guy coming in. It just gives us better options.”

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Paul Kukla founded Kukla’s Korner in 2005 and the site has since become the must-read site on the ‘net for all the latest happenings around the NHL.

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