Not everything can be perfect, right?

While a lot has gone right for the Bruins this season, the repeated march to the penalty box and the penalty kill that follows have quietly been the underlying issue. 

READ MORE: What Has Gone Right for the Bruins at the Olympic Break

It also does not help that the Bruins have taken the most penalties in the NHL. 

When you give a team so many power plays, they are eventually going to score. See what happens when the Bruins get on the man-advantage.

READ MORE: How the Bruins Turned Their Power Play Into a Strength This Season

It did not start out as a problem, though.

In October, the Bruins took 65 penalties, the most in the league that month. That trend has not changed. They ranked second in penalty minutes with 146. Given that, the penalty kill was ranked 15th at 81.5% – the Bruins only allowed 10 goals while shorthanded. 

The penalty kill only got better in November. The Bruins took 73 more penalties that month; they were shorthanded 52 times. In those 52 times, the Bruins killed 44 penalties. Their penalty kill improved to ninth in the league at 83.0%.

Then the penalties started to get in the way. The Bruins were in San Jose, CA, for their lone trip to the Shark Tank, and they took seven penalties. They could not find their footing, and they lost 3-1. 

“We had all the momentum, but then just took too many penalties,” Elias Lindholm said after the game. “I don’t know how many penalties we took, but it’s hard to win games in this league when we’re in the box that much.”

There’s another issue with taking a lot of penalties.

“You automatically leave your best players on the bench,” Sturm added after that game. 

And that is where the Bruins get stuck. David Pastrnak and Morgan Geekie, the two leading scorers, do not kill penalties for the Bruins. It is hard to generate offense when those two are on the bench. 

December is when the penalty kill started to become an issue for the Bruins. The Bruins killed penalties at a 74.5% rate in the 14 games that month, which ranked 26th in the NHL. Overall, the Bruins’ penalty kill dropped from ninth to 16th. 

At the end of December, the Bruins had taken 210 penalties this season. 

“It’s definitely something we’ve talked about trying to clean up,” Alex Steeves said after the Bruins surrendered seven penalties against Montreal on December 23. “Seems to be just finding new ways, or the same ways, to keep happening. I know a lot of times guys are trying to play hard and kill plays, and the stick finds a skate or finds a face or stuff like that. We’re the most penalized team in the league, so we got to clean that up.”

At the start of the New Year, the Bruins slowed down their penalty taking, only taking 58. They were shorthanded 3.14 times per 60 in January, the lowest monthly rate of the season, going shorthanded 44 times.

However, they allowed 14 power play goals in January, the most they have conceded in a single month this season. 

They did not lose much in January (11-2-1), but their two regulation losses went hand-in-hand with penalty kill struggles.

READ MORE: ‘Very Consistent, Very Hard, Structured:’ Bruins Finish 9-0-0 at Home in January

The Bruins allowed three power play goals to the Seattle Kraken in a 7-4 loss. 

They only took three penalties, but killed just one in a 6-2 loss to Dallas. 

“PK’s got to be a lot better. We can’t give up [a goal] every game,” head coach Marco Sturm said after the loss in Dallas. “We got to make sure we’re going to be better in that area.”

Even into the first two games in February, the penalty taking resurfaced, and the penalty kill could not keep up. 

The Lightning scored three straight power play goals in a comeback win at the Stadium Series. Three days later, the Florida Panthers scored twice on the power play in a shootout win in Sunrise, FL.

In the two games, the Bruins took 18 penalties and went shorthanded 11 times. 

At the Olympic break, the Bruins’ penalty kill is 28th in the NHL at 76.4%. They are first in penalties taken at 286 and times shorthanded at 212. They also rank second in penalty minutes with 769.

Plenty has gone right for the Bruins this season. That’s why they are in a playoff spot at the Olympic break. They have proven they can win 5-on-5, and the power play has become a serious threat.

But the margin for error shrinks in the last 25 games. 

They can fix it. They have shown flashes of discipline and a capable penalty kill this season. Until they consistently stay out of the penalty box or start killing penalties at a higher rate, this remains the underlying issue that could disrupt an otherwise strong season.