The Boston Bruins were dealt a major blow before the puck even dropped on their regular-season finale matinee at TD Garden. Netminder Tuukka Rask, the obvious go-to goalie in a basic must-win for the Black and Gold, was sick, and unable to give it a go in the Boston crease.

That forced Jonas Gustavsson into the Boston net on short notice, but it didn’t matter much, as the Bruins scored just once en route to an ugly, 6-1 loss to the Ottawa Senators on Saturday.

“We all have to accept responsibility here,” B’s coach Claude Julien said after the loss. “Our goal was certainly to duplicate our effort that we had against Detroit. When you look at what happened this afternoon it’s even more disappointing because we could have controlled our own [fate] again and we weren’t able to do that and at times this year we weren’t able to do that. Some of those big games, it’s about the mistakes we kind of made, puck management at times were an issue for us.”

B’s forward David Pastrnak continued his recent hot ways, and opened up the scoring for the Bruins with his 15th goal of the season, and his third in the last four games.

The goal served as the only score of an opening first period that favored the Senators in shots, 17-to-10, and it was clear that the Bruins expected better from themselves in the second.

But that didn’t happen -- not in the opening 10 minutes of the period, anyways -- as the Senators struck with four goals on just 12 shots to open up the middle frame. The first came from Chris Neil at 1:42, then Zack Smith scored at 5:54, Matt Puempel recorded his second of the season just 2:45 after that goal, and Mika Zibanejad scored his 21st of the year at 10:00 to make it 4-1.

Julien finally called a timeout after the Zibanejad tally, and though the Bruins would not allow another second-period shot, it was clear that this was yet another period that escaped well out of their hands.

“We knew we didn’t have a good first and we didn’t follow that up at the start of the second, and kind of let it slip away there,” Brad Marchand said of the team’s second period. “We weren’t playing our game, we weren’t putting pucks in deep and pressuring hard enough, and it ended up costing us.”

In desperation mode, the Bruins pulled Gustavsson for a 6-on-4 advantage on a Ben Harpur penalty, but Jean-Gabriel Pageau struck on the empty cage to make it 5-1. The Bruins tried it again later, this time on a Mike Hoffman penalty, and once more, the Sens scored.

After the game, the Bruins knew they faltered. But, understandably, had trouble explaining it.

“It’s tough. It’s frustrating, but that’s hockey,” Marchand, who finished the regular season with a career-best 37 goals, said after the loss. “That’s what happens when you give points away earlier in the year, it ends up coming down to the wire. So we just have to play more desperate next year.”

With the loss, and Philadelphia’s win, the Bruins will not skate in postseason play for the second year in a row. This is the first time the Bruins have missed the playoffs in back-to-back seasons since 2005-06 to 2006-07, and the first time it’s happened in Julien’s nine-year tenure in Boston.

Random thoughts and notes

- So, this really happened. One game after they absolutely dominated the Detroit Red Wings in a must-win, the Bruins did not show up in a matinee game with the Senators. Borderline unbelievable. But at the same time, 100 percent, completely believable. When you look at the B’s struggles this year, it almost always came back to the Black and Gold not getting the job done against bad teams. In the last two weeks alone, the Bruins beat the St. Louis Blues and nearly overcame a 6-0 deficit against the Chicago Blackhawks, but lost to the Sens, Carolina Hurricanes, and New Jersey Devils.

- The fallout from this game/season will be interesting. It obviously begins with the coach, Claude Julien. I still don’t believe that this is a guy you should can, even if the Bruins completely fell out of the race for the second season in a row. Julien still brought the Bruins within a win of making the postseason, even with four No. 4 defensemen on his roster and offseason plug-ins like Jimmy Hayes, Joonas Kemppainen, and Zac Rinaldo contributing almost nothing for basically an entire season. But it’s clear that the Black and Gold need an external upgrade to their defense, and how they go about getting that is a mystery.

Up next

One interesting offseason.

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