Looking for more second chances

BOSTON — The idea is to come home empty-handed. No bullets in the chamber, no gas in the tank. There’s no reason to conserve anything at this point.

The Bruins visit Canadian Tire Centre on Friday night with the idea of making the Senators return to TD Garden on Sunday for Game Six of this best-of-seven first-round series. The B’s can’t do that if they don’t score at least once, which they weren’t able to do in the 1-0 loss that put them on the brink of elimination on Wednesday night.

So, the basics are simple: Players who play best play the most, and shots must be both plentiful and on target.

“As a whole, our team needs some second-chance opportunities,” interim head coach Bruce Cassidy said Thursday. “I think we’ve been lacking in that area.

“It starts with our shot total. Sometimes we’ll be down because of the way teams play, and some of it’s on us to hit the net and get some second chances. I think that’s where, as a team, we’ll try to focus a little more: Shoots for rebounds, from off-angles, hit the net, and let’s get people there and force them.”

Some of that isn’t quite as easy as it sounds.

The Senators, for example, block a lot of shots — almost 16 per game in this series — before those attempts get to goalie Craig Anderson. And when the B’s do get pucks through to the net, they invariably find themselves outnumbered there.

“They have five guys in there when there’s a shot,” said Brad Marchand, the 39-goal, 85-point winger in the regular season who hasn’t scored a point since his third-period goal won Game One, 2-1. “They collapse pretty low; they’re all there to get the rebounds. It’s not easy when they have five, and you can only have three [forwards] there.”

Then again, it’s impossible to scrap for rebounds when there aren’t initial shots, and the Bruins aren’t generating many: They’ve averaged 24 per game in this series — close to 10 fewer than their 33.2 per-game average during the regular season.

Game Four was a worst-case scenario: The Senators didn’t block as many shots as usual

(11), but the B’s helped them by missing the net on 16 attempts — seven of those from top regular-season goal scorers David Pastrnak (four misses, zero shots on goal), who netted 34 during the season but has only one in this series, and March-and (three misses in Game Four, but with a team-high six on goal).

The Bruins have cracked the Senators’ defense-first mentality in spurts — a two-goal second period in Game One, three in the second periods of Games Two and Three — so they’re confident they can do it again.

Meanwhile, confidence has grown in a group that was previously feared to be the probable cause of a quick exit: The Bruins’ patched-together defense corps — still expected to be without Top 4 blue-liners Torey Krug, Adam McQuaid and Brandon Carlo on Friday — isn’t the primary cause for the 3-1 deficit in the series.

The group played so well in Game Four, in fact, that veterans Zdeno Chara (24:09 of ice time on Wednesday) and Kevan Miller (18:57), who had played almost half of the overtime losses in Games Two and Three, saw their fewest minutes of the series, and rookie Charlie McAvoy (team-high 25:03) didn’t exceed his 25:26 average for the series.

All that, plus Thursday’s day off, sends the Bruins’ critical players into Friday with some energy. They’ll need it.

“Whatever it takes, we need to make sure we’re willing to go the distance for however long it takes to get a win,” winger David Backes said.

“We’ve lost three one-goal games, we’ve won one one-goal game. We just need to get on the right side of that line.”

“When your back’s against the wall, you’re desperate,” Cassidy said. “We’ve got to win the game Friday night. It’s that simple. If guys have to play a little more, then that’s what they’re going to have to do. And then we’ll worry about Sunday on Sunday.”