Lohrei bringing flash of offense to Bruins in playoffs

BOSTON -- The three rules still roll off Mason Lohrei’s tongue. He doesn’t even have to think.

“It was always pass the puck, backcheck, and have more fun than anybody else,” Lohrei said.

If Dave Lohrei, a longtime hockey coach, was going to take his kids to the rink, those were the three rules that they needed to follow every day, every time. They were sacrosanct.

“When you’re growing up, nobody passes the puck, everyone wants to score,” Mason Lohrei said. “So, that’s one of the reasons I think I became kind of pass-first player. I always try to play with my head up and find guys. And then backchecking -- I was playing forward -- and it’s kind of embarrassing watching kids just not going to backcheck, right? And then having fun. That’s what it’s all about.

“So, I try and keep that same mindset today.”

And as the 23-year-old defenseman has had a breakout Stanley Cup Playoffs, going from an unknown rookie to a high-flying, between-the-legs-goal-attempting, fearless player, it’s clear that he’s still hewing close to his father’s No. 3 rule.

When the Bruins started the playoffs, in the Eastern Conference First Round against the Toronto Maple Leafs, Lohrei was not in the lineup. It took until Game 3 for him to make the cut. He has not moved since, providing a flash of offense from the back end, including his first career playoff goal in Game 1 of the second round against the Florida Panthers, with his score standing as the game-winner.

It’s something the Bruins could use more of as they get set to host the Panthers in Game 4 of the second round at TD Garden on Sunday (6:30 p.m. ET; MAX, truTV, TBS, SN, TVAS). Boston trails the best-of-7 series 2-1.

With the Bruins struggling to find offense, Lohrei’s potential to add is significant, his assist in Game 3 on Jake DeBrusk’s goal bringing him to four points (one goal, three assists) in eight games, as many points as defensemen Charlie McAvoy and Hampus Lindholm.

That’s for now, and for the future.

“The sky’s the limit for him,” McAvoy said. “He’s got an extremely high ceiling. His potential is off the charts.”

The rules were instituted early, back when Lohrei was around 3 or 4. It started because, as a coach -- a youth coach, a high school coach, a college coach, a junior coach -- it always bothered Dave Lohrei that kids wouldn’t (or couldn’t) pass the puck.

He set out to change that with his own kids, including sisters Zoe and Veronica.

The passing rule was followed by the backchecking rule -- “A lot of kids go down, try to score, and they go, ‘Well, guess I’ll waltz back.’ No, we didn’t do that,” Dave Lohrei said -- and the one about having a good time, disturbed as he was by the image of squirts crying in postgame locker rooms.

“I said, ‘We are going to have more fun than anyone else in the room that day, every day,’” Dave Lohrei said. “Practice, games, doesn’t matter the outcome. We’re going to have fun playing the game. I still tell him to have fun playing the game -- and I still tell him to pass the puck. And if he doesn’t backcheck and reload, he doesn’t play.”

Back then, Lohrei was still a forward, a position he would play until he was 16 and there were multiple injured defensemen on his team at Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana, where had chosen to go as a 15-year-old.

It would be a monumental decision.

It has yielded a player who brings all of his offensive instincts to a defensive position, a player who his college coach Steve Rohlik said is “just scratching the surface of playing the position.” With that, there is still some maturation to come, still some understanding of when to try the crazy play and when not to, when to go for it and when to hold back.

“Now, he knows the position, he’s learning when to, when not to, the high risk to the simple play,” said Rohlik, the coach at Ohio State. “The simple play is not a bad thing. I talked to him a lot, like being boring sometimes is not a bad thing. And he’s capable of that, but he’s capable of obviously doing a lot more.”

And he doesn’t shy away. He’s willing to take chances, ones that could make a coach nervous, but that often work out.

“There’s been a lot of those moments, like jumping into a rush, it might be late in the period. And you’re like, ‘No, we don’t need that, OK, nice play, whew, nice goal,’” Rohlik said. “He’s good enough to pull a lot of that off, but I think he’s also smart enough to understand, ‘I’ve got to pick my spots a little bit better.’ He’s gotten to this level, it can’t be just run-and-gun whenever you want to go, but you never want to take that away from a horse that can get out there and sprint.”

Part of that comes from the lens through which he sees the game, partly born of being a coach’s son, partly just an innate ability to have a certain feel for the ice, to see what is coming and join plays and make plays. There are things he will try, Rohlik said, that others wouldn’t even think about.

But if there is one thing that is clear, it’s that Lohrei is not cowed by the big moments, not intimidated by the players he now shares the ice with, not interested in holding back. He is not afraid.

“I just think that the way that he’s handled the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the emotion of it, the intensity of it, I think it has propelled him,” Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said. “He’s an extremely competitive player. It may not show in the physicality [with the] way he plays, but it shows with his poise with the puck. There’s different ways to be intense. He wants the puck. … You have to have players that want the puck in big moments.”

And in them, he has shined.

It all dates back to when he first put on skates, at 22 months, on Thanksgiving weekend in 2002. He was decked out, in skates and helmets and shin pads.

“He wasn’t moving anywhere,” Dave Lohrei said, “but he still was having fun.”

Even now, even as he’s made it to the NHL, even as the games matter so much more and the lights are so much brighter, he knows that the game comes down to those principles he learned long ago. The ones so tethered to his brain that he doesn’t even hesitate to repeat them.

Pass the puck. Backcheck and reload. Have fun.

“It’s just kind of something that was ingrained,” Lohrei said. “When you’re so little, growing up, and basically every day you’re going to the rink. You’re hearing that, and it just becomes what you expect, what you know that you should do. I think now, I wouldn’t say I think about it too much. But you asked me, and it’s right there.”