When you think about the best possession teams in the league over the last several years, the Boston Bruins spring readily to mind.

They have two of the 10 best score-adjusted possession seasons seen since 2012-13. And even last year, while constituting a slight step back, ranked 37th out of 120, putting it in the same neighborhood as this year's performances from very good teams like Tampa or St. Louis. Having Zdeno Chara and Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand and Loui Eriksson in the lineup for a lot of those games certainly goes a long way in this regard, even as a few of the other good possession players on the roster have been stripped away.

So it is quite troubling that there have only been a few stretches this year when the Bruins even peaked their heads up above the 50 percent mark, and entered Thursday's games sitting 19th in the league in score-adjusted possession, behind Edmonton and Philadelphia.

(They dipped under it again in Thursday night's win over the Chicago Blackhawks.)

Being just 48.5 percent in this regard is a serious issue, and a bigger issue here seems to be that the Bruins are simply trending in the wrong direction.

It is, again, understandable to some extent. The Bruins used to be a team with elite depth, even if they did often overpay for it. Now, the team has just six regulars on the roster (those with 500-plus minutes at 5-on-5) who carry positive possession numbers. You can probably guess three of them: Bergeron and Marchand are still godlike at more than 54 percent apiece, Eriksson is third at about 52.6 percent, while Brett Connolly has benefited from a lot of minutes with Boston's top-two, and Matt Beleskey is very marginally north of break-even. The only other guy to clear 50 is oft-scratched Colin Miller.

Meanwhile, David Krejci is very slightly below the water line, and it just gets worse from there. Let's put it this way: They're still using Zdeno Chara as their shutdown guy on defense for want of anyone better to handle those duties, and even he can't keep the puck in the attacking end any more. Okay, sure, he's 38 years old (39 in two weeks!), and he's been saddled with Zach Trotman and Kevan Miller for the bulk of his time this season, because the team has so systematically stripped away anything useful on the blue line that the wear and tear of being the most dominant defenseman of his generation are finally starting to show.

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All of which continues to drag the Bruins down deeper and deeper into this self-made hole. The once-titan of the East is now meekly battling it out with the Oilers and Blue Jackets to see which finishes in the bottom third of the league in terms of possession.

There is, of course, more to hockey than corsi-for percentage, but the Bruins aren't doing too well in other cases either. Their ability to generate more high-quality scoring chances than their opponents rivals that of the Calgary Flames, which is to say they get outchanced on a more or less nightly basis. They're also very slightly above water in terms of shots on goal, and in terms of actually putting the puck in the net, well, they're chugging along at 52 percent, good for 10th in the league.

The overall trend, though, is really, really bad.

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