Bruins defense starting to chip in a little bit more

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BOSTON – The Bruins are still scrounging for goals at this point with Patrice Bergeron at least a few days away from a return to the lineup. And the defense hasn’t been as staunch while allowing a combined nine goals to the Penguins and Sabres over the last two losses without any points to show for their efforts.

So Bruce Cassidy has preached to his defensemen to get involved early and often when the situation makes sense offensively, and that has happened in the last couple of games. Brandon Carlo snapped a 115-game goalless streak with a score while stepping up into the offensive zone against Pittsburgh on Friday night, and it was Steve Kampfer scoring his first goal of the season while stepping into a Joakim Nordstrom pass in Sunday’s 4-2 loss to the Buffalo Sabres.

Torey Krug provided the other lamp-lighter on Sunday, so it was an all-defensemen offensive show against Buffalo without enough offensive oomph up front.

The goals didn’t ultimately help the B’s win either of those games, but it was rewarding to see something preached by the coaching staff playing out in games. The Bruins have 12 goals from their defensemen group as a whole this season, which is the same amount as Matthew Dumba has all by himself with the Minnesota Wild this season.

So there’s definitely room for a bit more production, to be sure.

“We need it, right? You have to be part of it at the right time. That’s been our – we’ve wanted to guard against just selling out because we haven’t scored enough to get into those trade chances type of games. We’ve lost them the last two nights, right? It just hasn’t gone our way,” said Bruce Cassidy. “Now whether we’ll continue to do that, who knows?

“But I don’t think that’s our formula right now, all things considered. It’s just not going in. We had another goal taken off the board again [Sunday], like in Pittsburgh, that could have been the difference as well. We’ve got to be careful when they activate, and he picked a good time in order to make a good play.”

The Bruins could definitely use the additional goal-scoring punch as it’s certainly not quite the shutdown unit that it is when big No. 33 is in the lineup patrolling the defensive zone.  

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