Bruins Leave a Point on the Ice

After struggling to come out strong in the first period the past few games, the Boston Bruins looked much better at the start of the game Tuesday night when they played host to their division rivals, the Florida Panthers. While the Bruins were unable to score in the opening period, they were able to put pucks on the Panthers’ goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky and were about limiting the chances that Florida had in the other end. It was good to see the Bruins starting the game on time.

It was the second period that was especially impressive—with the Bruins not having been very strong in the middle frame this season. It began with David Pastrnak who lulled Bobrovsky into thinking he was going to pass the puck to Brad Marchand. With what appeared to be almost a blind shot on net, Pastrnak got the Bruins on the score board first 11:55 into the second period. Joakim Nordstrom followed up 2:07 later to make it 2-0.

While the Bruins were on their first power play of the game—with the Panthers Dryden Hunt sent off for a somewhat soft holding call, Anders Bjork notched the third of the game and his third for the season at 17:15 of the second. And just as it looked like the Bruins would be going into the second intermission up 3-0, Zdeno Chara potted a rebound off a David Krejci shot to give the Bruins an impressive 4-0 lead.

Not surprisingly, when the Panthers returned in the final frame, Bobrovsky was sitting on the bench and backup goalie Sam Montembeault was between the pipes. Less than a minute into the third period, Aaron Ekblad got Florida on the board. And then things began to get a bit more physical. Just 1:08 into the third period, Vincent Trochek elbowed Pastrnak, who went down—though he wasn’t seriously injured, and Marchand went over to let Trochek know that such a hit wasn’t acceptable. Trochek got two minutes for the elbowing and two minutes for roughing. Marchand got a double minor for roughing. For some unknown reason the teams played five on five with none of those penalties posted on the board.

Chris Wagner joined Marchand in the box 2:41 later and this time Panthers Frank Vatrano put the puck past Tuukka Rask to cut the Bruins’ lead to just two goals. Another penalty, this time called on Sean Kuraly at 8:32 saw Florida’s Mike Hoffman score on the power play, and the ice was clearly tilted in favor of the visitors. With 1:39 remaining in regulation, Keith Yandle got the tying goal at even-strength and everyone was wondering what had happened to the Bruins.

When things couldn’t be decided in overtime, it definitely wasn’t looking good for the Bruins who this season were zero for seven in the shootout. They are now zero for eight and with that the Florida Panthers came back from a four-goal deficit, for the first time in franchise history, to win the game.

So just where did it all go wrong for Boston?

“Just things got compounded. We lose a stick on the first goal; we don’t recover. It’s a poor angle shot but a good shot, so you’ve got to get your game back together. We take some penalties. It seemed like we took a lot of marginal penalties tonight; we didn’t kill them. Same thing in Detroit, we had those issues. Not great penalties we took – guys throwing pucks into the middle of the ice, so we’re going to have to sit down and address the penalty kill in those situations, how we broke down and get better in that area,” described Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy.

“Now, all of a sudden, [the Panthers] got life, and they’re coming. Their goalie, to me, made terrific… one save after another down there, so you get your chance to sort of, you know, because they’re opening up, we’re getting a chance to extend our lead or calm things down. There’s two ways to calm things down: you’re going to score a goal because they’re coming at you and gambling all over the ice, or you’re going to defend better, and we did neither. Having said that, I do give their goalie a lot of credit for coming in cold. I mean, we missed open nets on the power play, he made some great saves, we hit a crossbar. So now doubt creeps into your mind, like is this really happening,” Coach Cassidy continued.

“But this is a team that’s closed out games for years, and the last goal to me – put everything else aside – is disappointing. We get beat one-on-one off the rush, winger circling out of the scoring area knowing the game is on the line. You could sit here and argue that the guy’s holding Bergy’s [Patrice Bergeron] stick and can’t clear the puck at the end, but structurally we were bad on that last goal. That’s the disappointing part to me. That’s when we’re usually rock solid,” Coach Cassidy finished.

And make no mistake, Coach Cassidy is concerned that his team that is known for being so strong in the third period was anything but on Tuesday night. He didn’t hold back on any aspect of his team’s performance, or lack thereof.

As for the players, they know what they did.

“I think that we just didn’t buy into the way we were playing in the first two periods. We came in between that second period and were saying that we needed to put together a full 60, but we really didn’t do that,” said Brandon Carlo. “I think it’s just something within ourselves that we need to regroup after this game especially. That was the message sent tonight. I think we can take it in a positive aspect and move on from it and continue forward with playing the way that we started off this year.”

“Obviously, we all realize that that was not our 60-minute game. I think that we know we lost a point and, like I said, it’s on us. I think at that point we have to be able to defend it and just play strong till the end,” said a subdued Chara.

The Bruins have a couple of days to look at video and regroup. There will be some work put into the penalty kill and perhaps some adjustments in other areas during the next practices. They will then travel to Toronto to take on the Toronto Maple Leafs on Friday before returning home to host the Washington Capitals on Saturday. These will be two important tests for the Bruins to see if they can reset their game to what it was at the beginning of the season