Bruins seek secondary scoring against Maple Leafs

BOSTON — So now what?

Well, Bruce Cassidy wasn’t quite sure on Friday afternoon, but he’ll have something figured out by the time the puck drops on Saturday night in Toronto (7:05, NESN, WBZ-FM 98.5).

The Bruins’ head coach could consider himself to be dealing from a position of strength, because his team has a superior record (5-1-1) and far superior team defense and goaltending to the Maple Leafs (4-3-1), whom the B’s visit on Saturday to begin a road-home series that comes to TD Garden on Tuesday night.

One of these nights, though, the Bruins’ blazing hot top line of Brad Marchand (4-7—11), Patrice Bergeron (2-5—7) and David Pastrnak (8-5—13, with a hand in the team’s last seven goals) is going to be held in check at even strength and/or the power play, at which point the team’s weakness comes into play: Virtually nobody else outside the top line except Torey Krug, who joins that No. 1 line during power plays, is scoring.

Cassidy, who had shown patience with non-performing line combinations, is now forced to make changes. He won’t have No. 2 center David Krejci (upper body injury) for the second straight game, and fourth line winger/penalty-killer Joakim Nordstrom — the last Bruin besides Marchand, Bergeron or Pastrnak to score a goal — can’t play because of an upper body injury sustained in Thursday’s 4-3, shootout loss to the Lightning.

“We’re going to try to continue to tweak a little bit,” Cassidy said. “There’s a little bit of that going on.”

Krejci’s absence for much of training camp and two of seven games so far (he missed the Oct. 3 season opener with a lower body injury) may be a factor in the agonizingly slow start of Jake DeBrusk, his left wing. After jumping from 16 goals as a rookie in 2017-18 to 27 last year, DeBrusk hasn’t scored any through seven games this season. He has also contributed only one assist, during a power play, and is a team-low minus-4.

“If you look at statistics and things like that, I’m not really helping myself out in a lot of categories,” DeBrusk said. “You get frustrated, but then you get to a certain point where you stay patient, and try to understand that your time will come.

“Sometimes the game doesn’t come to you. You’ve got to go to the game.”

DeBrusk, who admitted he “(hasn’t) found my game at all this year,” may get the opportunity on Saturday night. Likely teamed with Weymouth’s Charlie Coyle (also goal-less this season) and a right wing to be determined, DeBrusk will get to face one of the more porous teams in the NHL, despite the Leafs’ off-season attempts to reconstruct their defense. The Maple Leafs, ousted from the playoffs in two straight seven-game first-round series, rank 21st in the NHL with a team goals-against average of 3.38, and No. 1 netminder Frederik Andersen (4-2-0) has a 3.14 GAA and .893 saves percentage.

The Bruins, who rank third in the NHL at 1.86 goals against per game behind Tuukka Rask and Saturday’s starter, Jaroslav Halak (2-1-0, 1.69, .951), won’t have to face Leafs captain and No. 2 center John Tavares, who won’t play in the series because of a broken finger.

Cassidy hopes some of his players are ready to catch a more positive type of break.

“Offensively, the assistant coaches went through some stuff with every line” at Friday’s practice, the head coach said. “We were a little simpler, a little grittier, going to the net and seeing if we could get a greasy (goal). That usually gets the ball rolling.”