BOSTON — Morgan Geekie has changed everything up. He has ditched his Adam Oates curve. He is now using whatever curve — he does not know what it is — that former teammate and fellow right shot Victor Söderström prefers.
He has switched to a shorter stick. His flex, once at 87, is now down to 82.
Geekie even swapped out the usual black tape on his blade with white during Thursday’s morning skate. He endorses the thesis, proposed by some pro and amateur players, that black tape leads to sharper shooting and white promotes better puckhandling.
Being in an eight-game goal-scoring slump will convince finishers such as Geekie to try anything.
“Just try not to put too much weight on it,” said Geekie (25 goals), who went back to black tape for Thursday’s 4-1 win over the Calgary Flames. “I feel like I’ve been pretty lucky last year or so that everything seems to have gone in. So it’s kind of about time it was about to happen. Just one of those things everybody goes through.”
Case in point: David Pastrnak went seven straight games without a goal earlier this season. The thing, though, is that Geekie had not gone through it all season. The longest he’d gone without a goal was three straight games on two occasions. Geekie had drained 27.8 percent of his shots before he hit the wall.
But during his eight-game downturn, he has not buried any of his 15 shots. His shooting percentage has dipped to 23.8 percent.
It would be one thing if Geekie’s shots were simply not going in. On Thursday, while playing No. 3 right wing next to Alex Steeves and Fraser Minten, neither of his two shots qualified as high-danger chances. He did not do enough to put himself in dangerous ice. It was noticeable enough that coach Marco Sturm planned to make note of it with Geekie at practice Friday.
“Just to grab him and show him a few things,” said Sturm. “Only him is the guy that can get out of this. He’s got to realize that, but he’s also got to work for it. There were a few areas where he could have gone a different route, different way. Body language. Those are the things we’re going to talk about and show him (on Friday). He’s still a young player. He still needs to learn how to deal with that and also how to come out of it.”
The Bruins were fine with Geekie not scoring Thursday. They got goals from Sean Kuraly, Elias Lindholm, Casey Mittelstadt and Mason Lohrei: forwards from three different lines, a defenseman from the No. 3 pair. Joonas Korpisalo, playing for the first time since Dec. 27, stopped 28 shots.
Like most attackers, Geekie is at his best when he gets open between the faceoff dots. At times, he tends to drift to the outside. The speed and accuracy of his one-timer let him get away with it. But when he’s not producing quality scoring chances, interior ice has to be his destination. Viktor Arvidsson did plenty of it against Calgary.
“What I recommend him to do is play like Arvy today,” Sturm said. “Why did Casey score? Why did Mason score? It was because of Arvidsson. Because he was around the net the whole night. Yes, he didn’t score. But that’s how you get out of it — being more in those tough areas. Because you’re going to get some bounces. You’re going to be a lot more involved.”
The longest Geekie had gone before this segment without a goal was at the beginning of 2024-25. He kicked off the season by not scoring in 11 straight games. It cost him five additional games of playing time when then-coach Jim Montgomery made him a healthy scratch.
“He’s got to remember it’s the first time in what, 40-some games in? That’s actually a pretty good stretch,” Sturm said. “So don’t kick yourself. Also, he’s been scoring a lot of goals, probably more than everyone expected. There’s a lot of good things. He’s got to remember that. And he’s got to simplify his game, too. That’s part of being a hockey player, part of being a goal scorer. Everyone goes through it. Now he’s just got to go back to simplifying his game a bit more, work his way out of it and don’t think too much. Because he’s fine.”
Geekie (105 shots) does not shoot as much as Pastrnak (134). The velocity and accuracy of Geekie’s shot allow him to be more selective with his sniffs.
However, it may work in Geekie’s favor to pursue quantity as well as quality.
“Just keep shooting it, man,” Geekie said. “I’ve never really put too much thought into it. It’s just one of those things where you get hot, you get hot. The more chances you create, the more opportunity you have for it to go in. There’s other guys that will step up and put pucks in. Just trying not to worry about it too much.”
