Flavin Media

With any of the recent Bruins coaches in memory, they’ve always expected the defense to handle traffic in front of the goalie. This is something Bruins defenders have the physical tools to do but often fail to fully embrace.

Since being traded here, Andrew Peeke has consistently gone down to clear opponents out of the net front. The first video shows just one example of Peeke’s awareness—looking around to identify impending traffic in front of Swayman. The second shows him being physical and locking up the stick of a lone attacker.

These are just two of many instances where Peeke has tried to address the team’s lack of physicality in managing net-front traffic—a quality coaches would undoubtedly want the rest of the defensive pairings to emulate. This has been a missing piece of the defensive core for some time.

This team wants to be built on defense and goaltending, so now is the time for the rest of the defensemen to follow Peeke’s example in consistently addressing net-front traffic.