Boston Bruins

Here we go again...
March 24, 2017, 4:14 AM ET [37 Comments]
Ty Anderson
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Monday against the Maple Leafs was the biggest game of the season for the Bruins. They lost that game. So Tuesday against the Senators then became the biggest game of the season. They battled hard, but once again took a loss, this time by a 3-2 final. That meant that Thursday’s game against the Lightning became the most important game of the season. And the Bruins lost that, too, this one by a 6-3 final. Thursday was the most frustrating one yet, and there’s little doubt about that.

The Bruins scored the first goal of the game, but then allowed the Bolts to counter with a goal of their own just 44 seconds later. Zdeno Chara scored a shorthanded goal to put the Bruins back on top, but the Lightning responded even quicker that time, with the tying goal scored 24 seconds later. And when the Bruins jumped out to a 3-2 edge, the Lightning once again came back -- this time in 1:35 -- and tied things up at 3-3 through 40 minutes of play. In a span of less than three minutes, the Bruins blew three different leads and allowed the Lightning -- who were shorthanded and them some, oh and they lost Jason Garrison in the middle of this game, too -- to hang around.

That proved costly in the third period, as well, with goals from Jonathan Drouin and Nikita Kucherov.

“It’s this time of year,” Bruins defenseman Torey Krug said when asked if this slump, which has now reached a season-high four straight games, is surprising to the team. “Other teams raise their level of play and you’ve got to find a way to do that to yours, and no matter how well you’re playing or how well you’re not playing, you’re going to have to pick your game up. So, teams that are on a roll and they show up this time of year, you don’t just show up and continue to play the way that you have been. So, like I said, you’ve got to find the mistakes and correct them and get to work.”

Truthfully, Krug probably could have stopped after saying ‘It’s this time of year.’

After all, this is where it’s fallen apart for the Bruins in back-to-back seasons. It was in their final 12 games of last season that the Bruins dropped all but three games to close out their season, and that started with a five-game slide. This one has now reached four straight losses. The losses, as alluded to, have been against competition that the Bruins simply can’t lose to this time of year.

“And tonight’s situation, Tampa, they want to play into the spring as well, so we have to be ready after we score to keep pushing, and part of it, you can examine, did we get the right matchup, but at the end of the day, it is a focus, and it’s urgency, and it’s understanding time and score,” Bruins interim head coach Bruce Cassidy said after the loss to the Bolts, who are now within three points of the Bruins for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. “We did not have a good comprehension of that tonight, I don’t think, and of late. We’ve let games get away, and you can look back, even this year, we’ve had some goals scored against us late throughout the course of the year, so it’s been built in this year, and we’re still fighting through it, to be perfectly honest.”

Now you’re left to ask yourself: This can’t happen for a third straight season, right? Right?

It’s honestly tough to imagine the Bruins falling back into this trap three years ago. But I don’t know what would be more shocking: Them doing it or not seeing it coming? But the alarming trends are there. As it did a year ago, the year-long successes of the Bruins seem to be flying out the window. The club’s top line -- namely Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak -- have gone dry on a scoring front. The team’s penalty kill, which has been the backbone of their success all year long, has allowed seven goals in their last four games played, including two on five trips on Thursday. And the team’s goaltending, led by Tuukka Rask, has come under scrutiny, and from Cassidy, too.

“He needed to be better tonight. We needed to be better in front of him, and he needed to be better on some of those goals,” Cassidy said of the 30-year-old Rask, who stopped 23-of-28 in the losing effort and saw his season save percentage drop to .910. “It’s March 23, so really, our focus needs to be there. You’d hope it’s more fatigue than focus, at this point in the year, but I can only speculate.”

“The goalie has to make a couple extra stops there and today I didn’t,” a visibly frustrated Rask admitted after the loss. “That’s part of my job to accept the fact that sometimes it’s your fault. There was a couple of times I should’ve made the save but it happens sometimes.”

Just at the worst possible time for the Bruins.

This and that

- Tough for me to tear Rask to shreds when many of his well paid Bruins brethren have been equally bad if not worse over the course of this losing streak; David Backes and David Krejci are just a few names that come to mind there. These players are paid handsomely because of their playoff prowess, but that means little if they can’t get you there in the first place. Just saying.

- One positive in this game? Zdeno Chara’s shorthanded goal. It didn’t mean much when it came to the final score of this game, I know, but it was Chara’s second shorthanded goal of the season, and that makes him just the eighth Bruins defenseman to score multiple shorthanded goals in a season in the franchise’s near-century of hockey. Chara is the first to accomplish the feat since Ray Bourque in 1995-96. The others on that list include Glen Wesley, Dick Redmond, Dallas Smith, Don Sweeney, and -- of course -- Bobby Orr. Chara is the second defender to do it this year (Calgary’s Mark Giordano is the other) and is just the 17th to do it since the start of the 2005 season.

- Bad night to lose if you’re the Bruins. (Is there a good night to lose this time of year?) But not only have the Lightning inched their way closer to you, but both the Leafs and Senators won, which means that the second wild card is the B’s most likely playoff route if they are to make it come Game 82.

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