It's high time that David Pastrnak 'step up' for Bruins as Game 7 comes calling

Is he unhappy that he hasn’t been on a power play with Marchand, McAvoy and Jake DeBrusk? Is Pastrnak injured to a degree that it has him looking like he’s playing around “65-to-70 percent” as Milbury estimated?

Are we just learning that Pastrnak simply isn’t the same player in the playoffs when gaining ice in the offensive zone becomes way more challenging, and those not willing to fight for it are going to be rendered largely ineffective?

It was telling that Montgomery openly challenged Pastrnak in the moments after the Game 6 loss, a move that underscores perhaps some exasperation at the way he’s played and the desperation that so many within the Bruins organization are feeling at this key point in the NHL postseason.

"Your best players need to be your best players this time of year. I think the effort is tremendous,” said Montgomery. “They need to come through with big-time plays in big-time moments. [Brad] Marchand has done that in the series. Pasta needs to step up. He needs to be the dominant player that we’re used to, you know? He’s doing it in flurries, but he’s not doing it as consistently as he did during the regular season.

“His linemates need to help him too. We’re not as good of an offensive team as we were during the regular season, but neither is Toronto. We’ve got to find a way, we’ve got to push through, and we’ve got to dig in.”

Pastrnak still leads the Bruins in shots on net after getting off to a slow start in this series, but he’s got 19 shots on net in six games thus far. The Czech winger was second only to Nathan MacKinnon in the entire NHL in shots on net during the NHL regular season with a whopping 382 shots on net in 82 games, an average of nearly five shots on net per game for the right winger.

As the numbers tell you, Pastrnak is down to barely three shots per game in the playoffs as Leafs defenders have roughed him up physically and done a pretty good job of pushing him out to the perimeter for a lot of his offensive looks. There’s also the simple fact, as Montgomery alluded to, that Pavel Zacha has struggled badly in the first-round series against the Maple Leafs as well.

Pastrnak acknowledged his struggles and admitted he needs to be more aggressive with his offense and looking for his own shot and needs to find a way to do some damage on the power play as well.

“I maybe don’t get enough shots. Maybe I need a little more of a shooter’s mentality. Usually that always helps me,” said Pastrnak, when asked what he needs to do to get his offense going in this series. “We obviously need to create more offense. We’ve only had one goal in [the last] two games, so we definitely need to score some goals.

“We don’t spend enough time in the offensive zone. We need to be stronger on the puck in the offensive zone to create more possession time, and don’t try to score so much right away off the rush.”

Whatever the reason, the bottom line is that Pastrnak is widely viewed as one of the NHL’s premier scorers and viewed as a Hart Trophy-level player in terms of skill, impact and greatness on the ice. With good reason as a player that’s scored 60-plus goals in a season before and is arguably the greatest pure goal-scorer in the long, storied Original Six 100-year history of the Boston Bruins.

But those numbers become a little less meaningful if Pastrnak can’t back them up with a superstar performance in the playoffs when his Bruins team absolutely needs him most as a leader, and as the most dangerous player on the team. The prediction here is that the B’s are going to lose a Game 7 on home ice, again, if they don’t have a superstar player like Pastrnak elevate his game to supernova levels.

The challenge is there for Pastrnak to “step up” as even his coach is pleading with him to do at this point, and it’s wholly up to him to meet it or shrink from it and forever alter the way he’s viewed as an NHL player when it comes to playoff pressure.