BOSTON – Torey Krug certainly wasn’t shying away from the responsibility he felt to step up and provide some offense from the back end with Charlie McAvoy out of the lineup.
Krug did much better than simply talking the talk, however, and instead he went out and scored a couple of goals in Boston’s 6-5 overtime win over the Detroit Red Wings, and also helped set up Brad Marchand’s OT game-winner in the extra session.
In all, Krug finished with a couple of goals and four points along with a plus-2 rating in 20:18 of ice time, and took it upon himself to step up and be more explosive offensively knowing one of the other main puck-movers will be out of the lineup.
“For sure. He’s [Charlie McAvoy] a guy that plays in every situation, a lot of minutes against top quality opponents,” said Krug. “You want to be the guy who they put more on your shoulders and more on your plate in front of you. Definitely the last time he went out of the lineup, I felt like I took another step in the right direction in my game. Obviously, I want to continue that this time.
“At the end of the day it’s just another in-division team that I’m always excited to play against. It’s a big moment for our team. This time of the season, we got to get as many points as we can. Obviously [it’s] a lot of fun getting the win.”
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It was Krug that got the ball rolling for the Bruins with a long bomb from the point just 37 seconds into the game, and then he crashed backdoor on the PP a little later in the first period after getting teed up with a Brad Marchand cross-ice pass. Needless to say his first game with newly acquired defenseman Nick Holden was also a successful experiment that we’ll probably see much more of in the near future with McAvoy out for at least a month.
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“Torey is a good shooter. The puck is finding the back of the net. I just talked to him about his decision making: When to shoot and what’s the appropriate pass versus shot. But those are his decisions on the ice. They happen in a split second. Then, to be patient with it, not force goals, and I think he’s done a good job with that,” said Bruce Cassidy. “You look at the goals [against the Red Wings], one was when Holden took that shot from the point and [Krug] wasn’t crashing the back of the net; It was open ice and the puck found him because he was in a good spot.
“He did go down on the power-play goal; I think it was the right play. So, some of that – he hit the post later from up top. I think he showed good patience to get into good shooting positions, and that’s a credit to him.”
With a month left in the season, Krug is in good position to set career-highs while on pace for 17 goals and 60 points and is once again averaging more than 20 minutes of ice time per game for the third straight season. All of that puts the 26-year-old D-man in a unique position to replace some of what McAvoy brings to the table on a nightly basis, and Krug did just that in a high-octane, offense-heavy win over the Red Wings.
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