Bruins Notebook: Necessity is mother of invention for Bruce Cassidy

Every coach would no doubt wish for a full roster of his players every night, but injuries are part of the game. And sometimes, a missing player or two could force a coach to look at his lineup in a way that he had not previously done, sometimes leading him to better line combinations.

Whether or not that will be the case for Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy with Craig Smith remains to be seen. But the lingering injury that slowed the shot-happy winger early this season — he was finally scratched for the two games last weekend to give him a longer time to heal after he missed one game earlier this season – gave Cassidy the opportunity to look at different line combos, and he liked what he saw.

Coming into the season, Cassidy’s idea was to simply plop Charlie Coyle into the second line center slot vacated by David Krejci between Taylor Hall and Smith in an effort to best re-create what had been a very good line, albeit with a key missing piece.

But with Smith struggling with his undisclosed injury – thus slowing any chemistry-building with the line – and finally moved to the sidelines, it gave the coach a longer look at Nick Foligno with Hall and Coyle.

The verdict? The coach didn’t hate it. And even though Smith is expected to return Saturday when the B’s get back in action (finally) in Philadelphia, Cassidy is inclined to keep the second line the way it is.

“I thought Foligno did a super job with that line in terms of getting to the net. And he’s automatically going there,” said Cassidy on Wednesday. “Taylor’s a guy who likes to have the puck in the O-zone, so he’ll need someone to go to the net. And Charlie’s used to having it. And Smitty’s a shooter. So it might be that Foligno adds an element that they need more, a net presence. And Smitty might find his way with a (Erik) Haula-(Jake) DeBrusk kind of line.

“Sometime you find that out when a guy’s hurt. So I think Nick did a good job with that. And we’ll see on Smitty.”

Throughout his career, spent entirely with the Nashville Predators before signing with the Bruins before the 2020-21 season, Smith has been one of the more consistent players you could find. If it was a full 82-game season, you could pretty much count on Smith to put up 20 goals. He would have been flirting with that mark last year with the B’s, too, when he had 13 in 54 games. Smith has not been a minus player since the lockout-shortened season of 2012-13, when he was minus-11.

He said on Wednesday that he now feels good and ready to go Saturday, but he clearly has not been himself this year, reflected in his stat line. With eight games under his belt, he’s still searching for his first point and is minus-7.

“Maybe your mindset’s in a different area and you’re chasing an injury versus staying ahead of them and being able to just compete,” said Smith. “But it’s part of the game. I’ve been doing it a while and these things come up, but it’s tough to go down right at the beginning (of the season) like that. But we’ve got a couple of days. We’re a little irritated with the breaks (in the schedule) but looking back it worked out to get a little bit of time to get ready and get back.”

Reilly to return to lineup on Saturday

Cassidy said that Mike Reilly, scratched the last two games, will be back in the lineup on Saturday.

“I told Mike that it wouldn’t be long-term up there (in the press box),” said Cassidy. “Now it all depends on how our team responds, but he’s a part of our D corps and we need to play well. This was one way to send a message and stick with it, because I thought the group was good on Saturday. But it’s not a long-term thing.”

The return of Reilly, however, does not mean that Jakub Zboril comes out of the lineup. Cassidy, in fact, said that he’d like to keep him in, though the coach said that he’d not yet spoken to the players involved and could not yet be definitive about lineup. One possibility could be for Connor Clifton to come out and Zboril move to the right side. If so, that could mean Connor Clifton could take a seat.

Still figuring out the power-play

While Cassidy has liked Foligno on the Hall-Cassidy line, he was a little less committed to Foligno on the top power-play unit. Foligno had replaced Hall at net front. There could be more experimentation in the future.

“It’s still to be determined. I think there’s time to sort through that,” said Cassidy. “Obviously, Taylor was still figuring some stuff out with those guys and Nick was part of the plan when we talked to him this summer about playing the net front. So this was going to be, well, ‘audition’ is not the right word because that’s not fair, but we were going to try different people no matter what, unless it was through-the-roof good right away. I talked to Taylor about that. Even Jake, who was there before, and Coyle. So there are still some options we could go to. Then Nick got hurt early on so it made it easy to put Taylor there. But we’re going to look at Nick there for a stretch and see if it is better. He is good at finding pucks in front and screening the goaltender, so that’s the advantage. Taylor was excellent at puck retrieval, one of the this we asked of that spot. I’m happy with both those guys in that regard. They just played differently in front of the net. Taylor’s more on the move whereas Nick is more static at the top of the crease.”