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On the high of a three-game win streak and the return of a healthy David Krejci, the Boston Bruins looked every bit like a complacent bunch on Thursday night, as the B’s were dealt yet another home loss, this time by a 4-2 final courtesy of the Vancouver Canucks at TD Garden.
“We needed a better start and we needed to get to the front of the net a lot better,” B’s coach
Claude Julien said after the loss. “Their goaltending’s been good. Vancouver, both their goaltenders have played well for them, they’ve kept them in a lot of games. That was the case tonight. We should have been a lot harder on their goaltender than we were.”
Vancouver opened up the scoring behind
Sven Baertschi’s first period marker, his ninth of the season, scored on a bizarre play that saw Baertschi beat both Torey Krug and Kevan Miller before he put the puck through a
Tuukka Rask that lost his stick in the process.
Stuck off the scoresheet in spite of a controlled first period that saw the Bruins outshoot the Canucks 11-to-4 (the Canucks blocked more shots thrown their way than they attempted shots the other way), it was more of the same for the Black and Gold through most of the middle frame as well.
But the Bruins eventually matched Baertschi’s marker with less than a minute to go in the period behind
Jimmy Hayes’ 11th goal of the season.
“I was just throwing a puck on net and got the favorable bounce,” the 6-foot-6 Hayes said of his tally. “It was good we got the guys in on the forecheck, caused a turnover and capitalized on it.”
The Bruins continued to pound away on Vancouver netminder
Jacob Markstrom, and the teams once again traded goals behind one from Canucks winger
Alex Burrows and one from Boston forward
Brad Marchand, it would be a goal from Vancouver alternate captain
Daniel Sedin, without brother Henrik, that pushed the Canucks out to a 3-2 lead.
With 12:57 left in the third, Markstrom and the ‘Nucks would not break.
Not even when
Loui Eriksson had Markstrom sprawled out on a last ditch effort.
“I thought we did have some pretty good momentum coming in here, we won a few big games, especially after climbing our way back in to tie it up a couple times,” Marchand said. “It’s frustrating that we allowed this one to slip away, but we have three games left here before the break so we have to make sure that we have a few big games to finish it off and go into that playing good hockey.”
Sedin put the bow on the win with an empty-netter for his second of the game and 21st of the season, while Markstrom stopped all but two of 30 shots against compared to Rask’s 23-of-26 loss.
Random thoughts and notes
- The obvious story in this one was the return of
David Krejci to the Boston lineup after a 10-game absence due to an upper-body ailment. With Frank Vatrano returned to Providence to accommodate Krejci’s activation, the Bruins started the night with No. 46 plugged as the centerman between
Loui Eriksson and 19-year-old
David Pastrnak.
But with the Boston attack pressing for a more consistent, balanced attack, Matt Beleskey found himself swapped back to Krejci’s left while Eriksson shifted from the left to the right wing.
“I changed lines I think more because not much was happening,” Julien said of the line flipping. “That’s why I moved guys around a little bit and so on and so forth. Like I said, I didn’t think we played that well and I needed to get something out of our players so I tried to move a few guys around.”
In almost 19 minutes of time on ice, the 29-year-old Krejci finished with a minus-1 rating, one shot on net, and was credited with one hit, while he appeared to get better with each passing shift.
“I thought it was alright,” Krejci admitted of his conditioning after a near three-week absence. “Obviously you have some shifts when you come back that you kind of lose track of you that timing and sometimes I kind of extended it so I have to work on that but other than that it wasn’t too bad.”
- It’s slightly heartbreaking when you hear this one referred to as a ‘rivalry’. I mean it
was a rivalry, and a damn good one at that, but I can’t help but feel as if it’s over. It was over when the John Tortorella-led Canucks came to Boston two seasons ago, and it’s very much dead now. Some of the faces are the same -- the Sedins, Alex Burrows, Jannik Hansen on the Canucks side and Bergeron, Chara, Marchand, and Seidenberg on the Boston side -- but it’s just not the same. You don’t have Roberto Luongo and Tim Thomas going at it with their soundbite barbs, Burrows didn’t bite anybody, Milan Lucic is in LA, and Mark Recchi’s not trying to shove his finger in Max Lapierre’s mouth.
These are two teams going through an identity crisis (shift is the word they’d prefer), and neither look like the formidable foe they were back in an unforgettable springtime run five years ago.
Also, just hit me that those playoff runs were five years ago. We’re all getting old and everything’s bad.
Postgame Podcast with the New England Hockey Journal’s Andy Merritt
Up next
The Bruins are back at it on Saturday night when they play host to the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Ty Anderson has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, has been a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter since 2013, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com.
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • 
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