BUFFALO, N.Y. — Marco Sturm had a Viktor Arvidsson problem. The No. 2 right wing was unavailable for Game 5 because of an upper-body injury. Arvidsson is doubtful for Friday’s Game 6.
It was just one of the issues the Boston Bruins coach had to solve.
Sturm’s defense was broken after the 6-1 Game 4 rout. His offense was nonexistent because of how poorly his defensemen executed breakouts. His forwards did nothing to put heat on Alex Lyon and the rest of the Buffalo Sabres.
Sturm had an unorthodox solution. He called on three healthy scratches to move the Game 5 needle.
“I wanted new energy. I wanted fresh energy. I wanted more energy,” Sturm said on Wednesday of welcoming Mikey Eyssimont, Alex Steeves and Henri Jokiharju to the Game 5 lineup. “I felt like these guys could give us that. And they did. All those three guys played hard. They gave us what we needed.”
Sturm is not a tinkerer when it comes to his lineup. Once he identifies pairs and combinations he likes, he lets them be. He is not Jim Montgomery, who would regularly shake up his lineup after one rotation through the lines.
But Sturm was facing an emergency. It wasn’t just that Arvidsson was out. The Bruins were facing a do-or-die in Buffalo with the brightness of TD Garden’s goal lights still flashing in their eyes.
Sturm had to break the glass. The only trio he didn’t touch was his fourth-line smash unit of Tanner Jeannot, Sean Kuraly and Mark Kastelic. He did not inform his players of the changes until shortly before warmups. That morning, Sturm had scrubbed their usual on-ice twirl.
“Never done it before,” Sturm said of such significant surgery. “That was the question: Should we keep it a little bit like the same, switch one or two guys around? Or are we really going to mix it up? I just had a better feeling of going that way because of Arvy being out.”
They were brassy moves, especially because the day before at Warrior Ice Arena, Sturm practiced with his usual lines.
Pavel Zacha, usually the No. 2 center, moved up to the first line with David Pastrnak. Marat Khusnutdinov, who had previously been the No. 3 right wing, switched to the left side on the top line.
Sturm started Game 5 with Fraser Minten, usually the third-line center, on the second line between Casey Mittelstadt and Morgan Geekie. Sturm went with an entirely new third line: Elias Lindholm, formerly the No. 1 center, between Steeves and Eyssimont.
As proof of how unusual Sturm’s decisions were, consider the regular-season five-on-five time played together for his four lines, per Natural Stat Trick:
- Khusnutdinov-Zacha-Pastrnak, 17:22
- Mittelstadt-Minten-Geekie, 4:05
- Steeves-Lindholm-Eyssimont, 1:16
- Jeannot-Kuraly-Kastelic, 350:48
Lukas Reichel, the No. 3 left wing in Game 4, was out. So was James Hagens.
In Hagens’ case, the 19-year-old’s skill set did not align with the pace and heaviness Sturm wanted on his third line. Not only that, Sturm did not believe five games of NHL play was enough to use Hagens in an elimination situation.
“It’s a Game 7 for us,” Sturm said. “I didn’t want to put him in a bad spot. He still needs to learn a lot. He played great so far to this point. Hopefully, I can use him again down the stretch. But (Tuesday), I thought we needed experience.”
The biggest of Sturm’s moves was dropping Lindholm to the third line. The Bruins are not paying Lindholm $7.75 million annually to ride with two healthy scratches. But one of the reasons the Bruins were in a 3-1 valley was because Lindholm had just one point: a goal in Game 1. He was not driving play between Geekie and Pastrnak to merit continued top-line action.
But by the second period of Game 5, Sturm did not mind how Lindholm was moving. At the same time, Minten wasn’t doing much on the second line. So Sturm flipped the centers in the second period. On his first shift as No. 2 center, Lindholm scored to tie the game.
“I felt like in the game, he had good jump,” Sturm said. “I liked his game. That’s why I moved him to the other line.”
Lindholm’s awakening and the offensive-zone presence of Eyssimont and Steeves were only possible because of how much better the Bruins exited their zone. The first-period nightmare of Game 4 was gone.
“Joki did a good job. Really good,” Sturm said. “He didn’t play for a while. It’s not easy for him to come in like that. He kept it really simple. Guys were just calm. Starting with Charlie (McAvoy), these guys were just calm. That’s where we play our best.”
