Bruins Must Bring The Noise In Front Of Woll

If the Boston Bruins want to win Game 7 against the Toronto Maple Leafs and avoid becoming the first pro sports team to blow a 3-1 series lead two straight seasons, then they will need to will their way to the net.

In the famous words of Public Enemy and Anthrax:

“Turn it up! Bring the noise!”

The Boston Bruins have hardly brought a peep to start the last two games, getting out-shot 11-2 in the first period of their 2-1 Game 5 loss and then 12-2 in the opening frame of Game 6, another 2-1 defeat. The inability of the Bruins to get pucks on net or down low to create havoc in front of former Boston College and current Maple Leafs goalie Joseph Woll, along with getting owned at the faceoff dot, have been the major reasons why the Bruins now face elimination.

“Just win more,” Boston Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery replied on Saturday morning when asked what his team needs to do to be better on the faceoff dot in Game 7.

When asked about the poor starts and overcoming how good the Leafs became at clogging up the middle when defending in the last two games, Montgomery got more in-depth.

“You gotta be more determined; you gotta win more battles,” Montgomery replied. “You gotta get to the net-front; you gotta get the puck out to the blue line. It’s what it comes down to tonight. You look at the entirety of the series and there’s very little separating the two teams. …5-on-5. There’s been a little bit of a difference between special teams, but they have drawn more special teams than we have in the last couple of games. They have created more odd-man rushes than us in the last couple of games. Those are areas that we need to be better in: drawing more penalties and getting more odd-man rushes.”

Big 6-foot-3, 234-pound winger Pat Maroon agreed and also believes the Bruins can do a much better job of creating havoc in front of Woll.

“They’ve been good,” the three-time Stanley Cup champion said of the Maple Leafs’ ability to clog the middle of the ice. “Especially in the D-zone, they clog the middle there. They obviously made adjustments, they’ve done an amazing job of that so for us forwards, we need to get high to low. Especially on those second opportunities, we’re not generating enough there. We need some big forwards like myself to get in front of the net and do a better job of screening the goalie. Like I said, the second opportunities where you get the team scrambling, get them on their heels; we haven’t had that, we haven’t had enough of that generating and of time and play.