Marco Sturm has turned faceoffs into something a little sharper than a simple puck drop in Boston. The Bruins aren’t just trying to win the draw - they’re trying to control the next two seconds, the next lane, the next touch. As Sturm put it, “For every dot,” Sturm said, “we have a plan.”
That mindset shows up all over the ice, but it’s especially clear when Boston gets the puck back in its own end. On defensive-zone wins, the Bruins are asking a basic question with a lot of consequence: where’s the open ice?
Most of the time, the answer is on the weak side, below the hashmarks. Boston likes to use that space to shift the puck behind the net and stay a step ahead of the forecheck.
In one example against New Jersey, Boston’s left wing Morgan Geekie stayed low while the center and right wing pushed out of the zone. The stretch play didn’t connect cleanly, but the Bruins still ended up in decent shape to recover the puck.
That same preference for the weak side can also turn into a longer play when opponents start cheating toward the low option. Boston has shown it can change the picture by sending the weak-side winger long instead. Against Carolina, the center got tangled up, both wingers got long, and the Bruins eventually turned that vertical push into a shot after a rim turnover.
The Bruins aren’t flashy at center ice, but they’re not wasting those draws either. Most teams win a neutral-zone faceoff and hurry the puck away.
Boston is more deliberate. On one center-ice win, Elias Lindholm swung away to open space in the middle, and David Pastrnak rotated into it with room to work.
That sequence nearly connected with Morgan Geekie on the entry.
Even when a neutral-zone faceoff doesn’t create a rush chance, Boston is still using it to improve the next possession. The “Center Swing Away” play gives all five skaters time to get set, which helps the Bruins control the wall battle that follows. After a retrieval, Fraser Minten changed sides on first touch to set up the next Boston sequence in the offensive zone.
And then there’s the one that sounds like a coach’s whiteboard nightmare but apparently works anyway.
Sometime last season, Viktor Arvidsson went into Sturm’s office with an offensive-zone faceoff play he wanted to test. Sturm wasn’t sold at first.
“One guy was going here. The other guy was going here.
This guy was going here,” Sturm recalled, standing up from his desk to draw green squiggles on his whiteboard. “He lost me.
Big time.”
Eventually, Sturm gave Arvidsson the go-ahead. Before one game, he remembered seeing Arvidsson go over the routes with Casey Mittelstadt and Pavel Zacha, and by Sturm’s recollection, the Bruins scored twice last year off that play.
The setup is built to create chaos. Arvidsson lines up next to the wall on his off-wing, and he starts a couple of stick lengths away from the hash marks so he won’t be bumped by the nearest defender. Off the draw, the center and the middle winger use picks to buy time for the receiving defenseman, while Arvidsson builds speed through the traffic.
Because NHL teams defend a lost defensive-zone draw man-on-man, that kind of movement makes it hard for New Jersey’s skaters to stay attached. In the confusion, Pavel Zacha slips free, wins the 2-on-1 at the net, and sets up a wide-open Arvidsson.
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