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Charlie Coyle Has Become a “Guy We Can Rely On” For Bruins

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Boston Bruins

Charlie Coyle scored his second goal of the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs, and collected his first assist, on Saturday afternoon. His strong performance helped propel the Bruins to a 3-1 victory over the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 3. The Bruins now lead the series 2-1.

Coyle’s big day is exactly what head coach Bruce Cassidy is looking for from the veteran center.

“Well we need Charlie Coyle to be an effective player for us, an impact player. He doesn’t have to dominate every night, I don’t think anybody does on our team, but you know we still need secondary scoring,” Cassidy told reporters postgame.

SPECIAL TEAMS IMPACT

In addition to being an impact player at five-on-five, Charlie Coyle has taken on a role for Cassidy on both the powerplay and penalty kill.

“He went on the first unit, we’ve moved him and Jake around there with Pasta out, we’ve got a new look with Marchy in front. We’ll have to look at and see how much we generated,” Cassidy continued. “I know we got a big goal out of it, that to me is timely scoring on the power play, not always the percentage, and today it mattered.”

Coyle, known as more of an offensive player, has also been a responsible part of the Bruins penalty killing unit.

“He’s added to our penalty kill,” Cassidy said. “When he first got here we didn’t give him as much responsibility there, we had other guys in the lineup, but he’s kind of pushed his way into that conversation so good for him. You know that means he’s playing PP, PK, and driving a line with Jack Studnicka tonight, a young guy. It was [Anders] Bjork in the past, it’s been [Nick] Ritchie who hasn’t been here a long time so the onus kind of falls on him to be the leader of that line.

“So that’s what we expect out of Charlie, play well in all those situations. Tonight we got some offense, great we need it, and again proved himself last year in the playoffs a guy that we can rely on and he’s proven to be that again.

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