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Despite season-high 50 shots, Bruins still shooting blanks
These Boston Bruins are good -- dare I say, even great -- at shooting the puck. What they’re not good at, however, is putting said puck into the four-by-six and scoring goals. Tuesday night’s head-to-head with the visiting New York Islanders was not an exception to what’s been the norm, as the Bruins peppered a season-high 50 shots on net, but scored just two times, en route to a 4-2 loss.
On a night in which the Bruins finished with 95 shot attempts, and nearly battled out of an 0-3 deficit for the third time in the last few weeks, the Black and Gold were victimized by bad decisions from some of their best talents early and often. It was on the Isles’ first goal that Brad Marchand collided with Tuukka Rask and allowed Anders Lee to pop a puck into an empty net. On the second goal, Patrice Bergeron went ahead with a poorly timed pinch and it was Thomas Hickey that scored on an 3-on-1 for the Islanders. And it was on the third goal that Nikolay Kulemin bodied Kevan Miller off a puck in a one-on-one battle and found a hole in Rask’s pads for a goal and a 3-0 lead.
“Some of those mistakes on those goals are coming from our best players, and secondary scoring is there, yet we’re still not getting the scoring we should from a lot of our guys,” B’s coach Claude Julien said. “So I think that until we can find, or some of our best players can find their games, we’re going to be playing these types of games, back and forth, winning a big one, losing another one, and so on.”
Pulled after he allowed three goals on just 13 shots against, the 29-year-old Rask knows that nights like his Tuesday are an inevitability over the course of an 82-game grind.
“The first one, there’s nothing you can do about that. Second one, felt like all was square. Then, you know, to seal the deal and wish a Merry Christmas to the Islanders on the third one and let’s call it a night,” Rask said after the loss. “But, I don’t think you want to think about it too much. As our goaltending guru always says, you’re never as good or as bad as you think. So, it’s an even keel.”
“Tuukka has a bit of an off night,” Julien admitted after the game, “but the amount of times that he’s bailed us out, the least we could have done was bail him out.”
With Anton Khudobin in net, the Bruins made a game of things, with goals from Anton Blidh (the first of his NHL career) and Dominic Moore in the third period, but failed to get anything from their best.
“It just seems like nothing’s really working out,” B’s winger Brad Marchand, who had six shots in the losing effort, said. “Tonight we had 50 shots, and we had a ton of opportunities. A few crossbars and posts, just seems like it’s not going in for us and, you know, it is getting frustrating.”
In what was the B’s seventh game with at least 40 shots on net, goals only came from the B’s fourth line with Blidh, Moore, and Jimmy Hayes, and even prompted Julien to call them not-a-fourth-line.
“I don’t know if I’m going to call it a fourth line, to be honest with you,” said Julien. “They seem to be better than some of our lines. So right now, it’s nice to see that some of those guys are doing their jobs, and we need more guys doing their jobs to the level that they should.”
Greiss made a career-high 48 saves in the win while the Bruins dropped to 2-2-3 in games with 40-plus shots on net this season, and this was their first 50-shot net since Apr. 2015.
This and that
- Claude Julien is clearly fed up with some of his best scorers … well… not scoring. Rightfully so. Patrice Bergeron, with just four goals and nine points, is currently pace for what would be a career-worst 23 points this year and has held without a point in 18 of his last 23 games. The chemistry developed -- if there is any -- between David Krejci and David Backes has been rough to watch and it’s clear that both players have battled through some frustration in the process. Marchand has scored nine goals through 34 games this year compared to the 15 he had at this point last year.
The list goes on, too. But what clearly bothers Julien about these struggles the most is that there are times where the club turns it on and absolutely torments the opposition with heavy shot volumes.
“What you saw in the third period, I don’t know why we don’t bring that in the first. We wait until we’re in a hole, and the desperation, and I guess our work ethic and our compete level, should be that at the first. Not in the third, when you’re down three-nothing,” Julien said. “So, somehow we’ve got to find that. It’s not good enough, and we know that we struggle to score goals. Let’s be ready to play, and the way we gave up goals tonight, didn’t look to me like we were ready to play.”
- Frank Vatrano was a healthy scratch for Tuesday’s game, but could play in either one of these two games before the holiday break, according to Julien. Same for David Pastrnak. Vatrano had two goals in two AHL games last weekend, and says that he feels better everyday.
- For the first time since Nov. 2009, Dennis Seidenberg returned to TD Garden as a visitor.
Part of the B’s core from 2010 through this past summer when the Bruins opted to buyout the remaining two years of his contract, the 35-year-old Seidenberg returned to the Hub with the Islanders (and on a pairing with Johnny Boychuk because of course), and chimed in with his normal industrial game, with two blocked shots, six hits, and a plus-2 rating in 19:08 of time on ice.
It’s a shame things ended the way they did with Seidenberg, of course, but man, was he an absolute beast for the Bruins for a long time. That 2011 run does not happen without Seidenberg’s ability to be the perfect No. 2 behind Zdeno Chara. And in true Seidenberg fashion, it was understated as all hell.
The German-born defenseman actually finished the 2011 postseason with 690:49 of time on ice in 25 postseason tilts, which was the tops of that playoffs, and the third-most time on ice logged by any player since the start of the 2011 postseason (Blackhawks defender Duncan Keith logged 715:37 in 2015 and the Kings’ Drew Doughty logged a league-high 747:33 during the Kings’ run in 2014).
Many of the memories from that 690-minute playoff run were featured in a nice video tribute the Garden jumbotron presented Seidenberg with during the first television timeout of the night.
“A lot of emotions I guess,” Seidenberg said of the video tribute. “A lot of good memories.”
Up next
The Bruins will embark on a four-game road trip beginning with Thursday’s head-to-head with the Florida Panthers. The Bruins are 2-0-0 against the struggling Panthers this season.
These Boston Bruins are good -- dare I say, even great -- at shooting the puck. What they’re not good at, however, is putting said puck into the four-by-six and scoring goals. Tuesday night’s head-to-head with the visiting New York Islanders was not an exception to what’s been the norm, as the Bruins peppered a season-high 50 shots on net, but scored just two times, en route to a 4-2 loss.
On a night in which the Bruins finished with 95 shot attempts, and nearly battled out of an 0-3 deficit for the third time in the last few weeks, the Black and Gold were victimized by bad decisions from some of their best talents early and often. It was on the Isles’ first goal that Brad Marchand collided with Tuukka Rask and allowed Anders Lee to pop a puck into an empty net. On the second goal, Patrice Bergeron went ahead with a poorly timed pinch and it was Thomas Hickey that scored on an 3-on-1 for the Islanders. And it was on the third goal that Nikolay Kulemin bodied Kevan Miller off a puck in a one-on-one battle and found a hole in Rask’s pads for a goal and a 3-0 lead.
“Some of those mistakes on those goals are coming from our best players, and secondary scoring is there, yet we’re still not getting the scoring we should from a lot of our guys,” B’s coach Claude Julien said. “So I think that until we can find, or some of our best players can find their games, we’re going to be playing these types of games, back and forth, winning a big one, losing another one, and so on.”
Pulled after he allowed three goals on just 13 shots against, the 29-year-old Rask knows that nights like his Tuesday are an inevitability over the course of an 82-game grind.
“The first one, there’s nothing you can do about that. Second one, felt like all was square. Then, you know, to seal the deal and wish a Merry Christmas to the Islanders on the third one and let’s call it a night,” Rask said after the loss. “But, I don’t think you want to think about it too much. As our goaltending guru always says, you’re never as good or as bad as you think. So, it’s an even keel.”
“Tuukka has a bit of an off night,” Julien admitted after the game, “but the amount of times that he’s bailed us out, the least we could have done was bail him out.”
With Anton Khudobin in net, the Bruins made a game of things, with goals from Anton Blidh (the first of his NHL career) and Dominic Moore in the third period, but failed to get anything from their best.
“It just seems like nothing’s really working out,” B’s winger Brad Marchand, who had six shots in the losing effort, said. “Tonight we had 50 shots, and we had a ton of opportunities. A few crossbars and posts, just seems like it’s not going in for us and, you know, it is getting frustrating.”
In what was the B’s seventh game with at least 40 shots on net, goals only came from the B’s fourth line with Blidh, Moore, and Jimmy Hayes, and even prompted Julien to call them not-a-fourth-line.
“I don’t know if I’m going to call it a fourth line, to be honest with you,” said Julien. “They seem to be better than some of our lines. So right now, it’s nice to see that some of those guys are doing their jobs, and we need more guys doing their jobs to the level that they should.”
Greiss made a career-high 48 saves in the win while the Bruins dropped to 2-2-3 in games with 40-plus shots on net this season, and this was their first 50-shot net since Apr. 2015.
This and that
- Claude Julien is clearly fed up with some of his best scorers … well… not scoring. Rightfully so. Patrice Bergeron, with just four goals and nine points, is currently pace for what would be a career-worst 23 points this year and has held without a point in 18 of his last 23 games. The chemistry developed -- if there is any -- between David Krejci and David Backes has been rough to watch and it’s clear that both players have battled through some frustration in the process. Marchand has scored nine goals through 34 games this year compared to the 15 he had at this point last year.
The list goes on, too. But what clearly bothers Julien about these struggles the most is that there are times where the club turns it on and absolutely torments the opposition with heavy shot volumes.
“What you saw in the third period, I don’t know why we don’t bring that in the first. We wait until we’re in a hole, and the desperation, and I guess our work ethic and our compete level, should be that at the first. Not in the third, when you’re down three-nothing,” Julien said. “So, somehow we’ve got to find that. It’s not good enough, and we know that we struggle to score goals. Let’s be ready to play, and the way we gave up goals tonight, didn’t look to me like we were ready to play.”
- Frank Vatrano was a healthy scratch for Tuesday’s game, but could play in either one of these two games before the holiday break, according to Julien. Same for David Pastrnak. Vatrano had two goals in two AHL games last weekend, and says that he feels better everyday.
- For the first time since Nov. 2009, Dennis Seidenberg returned to TD Garden as a visitor.
Part of the B’s core from 2010 through this past summer when the Bruins opted to buyout the remaining two years of his contract, the 35-year-old Seidenberg returned to the Hub with the Islanders (and on a pairing with Johnny Boychuk because of course), and chimed in with his normal industrial game, with two blocked shots, six hits, and a plus-2 rating in 19:08 of time on ice.
It’s a shame things ended the way they did with Seidenberg, of course, but man, was he an absolute beast for the Bruins for a long time. That 2011 run does not happen without Seidenberg’s ability to be the perfect No. 2 behind Zdeno Chara. And in true Seidenberg fashion, it was understated as all hell.
The German-born defenseman actually finished the 2011 postseason with 690:49 of time on ice in 25 postseason tilts, which was the tops of that playoffs, and the third-most time on ice logged by any player since the start of the 2011 postseason (Blackhawks defender Duncan Keith logged 715:37 in 2015 and the Kings’ Drew Doughty logged a league-high 747:33 during the Kings’ run in 2014).
Many of the memories from that 690-minute playoff run were featured in a nice video tribute the Garden jumbotron presented Seidenberg with during the first television timeout of the night.
“A lot of emotions I guess,” Seidenberg said of the video tribute. “A lot of good memories.”
Up next
The Bruins will embark on a four-game road trip beginning with Thursday’s head-to-head with the Florida Panthers. The Bruins are 2-0-0 against the struggling Panthers this season.
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