Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Bruins attack plan for Game 2: Stress out Roberto Luongo

Dan Hamhuis, Zdeno Chara, Roberto Luongo

Vancouver Canucks’ Roberto Luongo, right, stops Boston Bruins’ Zdeno Chara, center, of Slovakia, as Canucks’ Dan Hamhuis, left, looks on during the first period of game one of NHL Stanley Cup final hockey action in Vancouver, British Columbia, Wednesday, June 1, 2011. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Bruce Bennett,Pool)

AP

One of the keys to success for the Bruins to try and beat the Canucks in the Stanley Cup finals is figuring out a way to beat Roberto Luongo. After Luongo’s 36-save shutout in Game 1 that saw a lot of his saves come on shots from a good distance away from the net, that’s not a good way for the Bruins to get Luongo out of his comfort zone.

While the Bruins again had their own sorts of issues on the power play, the main way they’re going to get success is to get Luongo feeling stressed out in goal. By increasing their presence around the net and making him work even harder than he already is, they can wear him down to the point that he can slip up in his form in goal and increase the Bruins chances of scoring.

Saying that and doing that are two entirely different things, however, and the Bruins know it. As for how they’ll try and go about things in Game 2 on Saturday night (8 p.m. ET on NBC), veteran Bruins forward Mark Recchi tells Joe Haggerty of CSN New England that they’ve got some ideas.

“You always think you can be harder on a team. You’ve got to make it tougher on every goalie . . . whether you think you played a perfect game or not,” said Mark Recchi, who is chief among the players expected to start fighting with more ferocity in front of the blue paint. “He’s a great goalie and you’ve got to make him work.”

Recchi continued: “Obviously you always need to have traffic. They’re going to try to get in front of Timmy, and that’s what all of our jobs are as players is to get in front there to try and make it as hard as you can.”


Big guys like Milan Lucic and Nathan Horton can get physical in front of the net on the Vancouver defensemen and make life trickier on Roberto Luongo,but it’s up to them to stir things up. With Zdeno Chara planting himself in front of the net on the power play, they could use that to their advantage. They weren’t totally able to do that in Game 1 but they’ll have to do it in Game 2 to avoid heading home down 2-0 in the series.

The one thing potentially working against Boston with that strategy is how Luongo’s matured and improved his mental focus this season and especially in the playoffs. The last two years in the postseason Dustin Byfuglien ran roughshod over the Vancouver defense in front of the net and made Luongo’s life a living hell. While Chicago caused him problems again in this year’s playoffs, guys milling around his net haven’t been the problem it has been in the past for Luongo. Instead, he’s let it roll off his back and he’s kept his cool.

It’s that brand of Zen focus the Bruins will need to break. Doing that while not running afoul of the law and drawing penalties makes for a tricky endeavor. If the Bruins can find a way, however, they might find the breaks they’re looking for to help even up the series.