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Bruins lose 11th straight to Caps; Beleskey on waivers

December 15, 2017, 1:30 AM ET [1 Comments]
Ty Anderson
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Here’s a borderline unbelievable stat: It has now been 344 minutes and nine seconds since the Bruins held a lead of any sort against Capitals netminder Braden Holtby.

For additional context to understand the timeline of that figure, their last lead dates all the way back to Nov. 2015, and that came as a result of a goal from Jimmy Hayes.

This seems like the best way to let you know that the Bruins, now on an 11-game losing streak to the Capitals (their longest against any opponent), dropped Thursday’s head-to-head with Holtby and the Capitals at the TD Garden by a 5-3 final.

“[The losing streak is] not something necessarily that I was thinking before the game being honest with you,” said Patrice Bergeron after the loss. “And it was a back-to-back game. We knew it was a challenge and we had to be good and be smart. A few breakdowns and a little lack of discipline made us pay is the bottom line.”

In a period with 12 saves from Anton Khudobin, it was the wheels of Jakub Vrana that led the Capitals to the game’s first lead, scored at the 17:34 mark of the frame.

It was far from a backbreaking goal -- the Bruins managed to tie things up in the second period behind a Bergeron power-play goal -- but it allowed a rested Washington group to control the pace of play. This has been a frequent problem in these meetings.

“We seem to wait around to see what would happen and then get behind and then react to it,” Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy admitted the loss. “So we were hoping we could set the tempo, and try to be physical, more assertive, control the play early against a team that was sitting here, waiting for us, and we played the night before... There’s been too much of chasing the game, and as it turned out, we ended up doing that again.”

Despite some straight-up buzzing efforts from the B’s, it was a Nicklas Backstrom goal that restored the Washington lead less than eight minutes after the Bergeron goal.

From there, the Capitals went back to their defensive shell, and fortified it with two goals courtesy of Alex Chiasson in just a 3:38 span in the third period.

The Bruins made it a two-goal loss with goals from David Krejci and Bergeron around an Alex Ovechkin empty-netter, but they were ‘box score’ goals in the sense that they would have led to believe that this game was closer than it was. Especially late.

“I feel like they just kind of have that group that’s good at getting the pucks out of their own zone,” Brandon Carlo said of the uphill climb they’re tasked with against a lead-protecting Caps club. “It makes it harder on us to stay down low and create more offensive chances around their net. They’re big bodies. We just have to get more pucks to the net and get in front of the net a little bit more.”

“To have to battle back is a tall ask. And against anybody. It took us right to the last two minutes, the last minute last night,” Cassidy acknowledged. “And tonight, where you’re pushing, you’re pushing, there has to be a breakdown on their part. And there were a few. We just weren’t able to finish.

“[The Capitals] are good through the neutral zone. If there was an area of our game that needed to be better, especially early on was our neutral zone defense. I don’t think we gapped up well enough and I didn’t think we were able to kill their entries. It led to some pretty good chances. Now you are defending, expending a lot of energy. You need your energy to score. Like I said, in the second we finally found that but we couldn’t
[score].”

This, of course, is nothing new when talking about Holtby and the Bruins.
He’s straight-up dominated the Bruins throughout his NHL career (Holtby now has 13 wins and a save percentage north of .940 in 15 career games against the Bruins), and he’s caught the breaks when needed. Tonight was no exception, either, with the Bruins ringing iron on at least three of their 74 shot attempts in a 37-shot effort.

“We shot a lot of pucks and some things didn’t go our way,” B’s netminder Anton Khudobin, who allowed four goals on 21 shots en route to his second straight loss, said. “When the black cat crosses the road, it’s just a black cat across the road.”

It’s a road that the Bruins continue to look for an exit off.

This and that

- The big news tonight came before the game, as the Bruins placed Matt Beleskey on waivers.

In the third year of a five-year, $19 million contract signed after a career-year in Anaheim, the 29-year-old Beleskey has struggled mightily over the last two seasons, with just eight points in his last 63 games, and zero points in 14 games this season. Beleskey had been a healthy scratch in six straight games prior, and played a season-low 6:03 in his last game, proving that he was not exactly in Cassidy’s plans or that getting his offensive game back on track was of the utmost importance.

Still, the Bruins know that Beleskey had value within the B’s room.

“[Beleskey] is very well liked in the room. So no one likes to see a player get waived,” Cassidy said. “The way we look at it as an organization is, he hadn’t played much, and I think the best way for him to get back to helping the Boston Bruins is to get playing. So assuming he clears, goes to Providence, finds his game, what he did well before previously – from my end, we just thought there were some players in the lineup that outperformed him plain and simple and we are trying to reward the players that earned it on merit and not look so much at maybe contract status, et cetera.

“I think some of the young guys have pushed him. We’ve seen it at different positions, and that’s as simple as I can make it. I like Matt. He’s very respectful of the coaching staff of what we are trying to do. We just felt we had better in the lineup. The team is going well. The decision was made.”

- How did the Bruins feel about Tom Wilson, who went completely unpenalized on the incident, jumping into the cross-checking scrum between Brad Marchand and Dmitry Orlov?

“I voiced my opinion at the end of the period: I think it’s wrong,” Cassidy said after the game. “And to me, to just put two guys in the box in that situation, when a third guy comes in there should have been an additional call. That’s the way I felt about it. They didn’t see it that way. Cleary two guys, Orlov and Marchy were battling and for him to come in is unnecessary to say the least in that situation. Their job is to police it on the ice. In that particular instance, that’s the way they saw it.”

Marchand, meanwhile, did his best to avoid ruffling any feathers when it came to his run-in with Wilson, including a late-game spat that earned each a 10-minute misconduct and early exits.

“That’s his game,” Marchand said. “He plays that way, and he’s effective at it, so, that’s what’s got him a job in the NHL and continues to allow him to play. Again, he’s effective at what he does.”

- Another weird stat from the Ty Anderson Stat Truck (it’s a dune buggy, actually): The Capitals are now 20-0-0 against the Bruins in games where Nicklas Backstrom has recorded at least one point. There are some things you just can’t explain and this is most definitely one of them.

Up next

The Bruins will have a weird Saturday 5 p.m. puck drop against the Rangers. It’s yet another ‘streak’ matchup, too, as the Rangers come to Boston with six straight victories over the Bruins.
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