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The Boston Bruins, desperately clinging to the eighth-seed in the Eastern Conference, skated off the Verizon Center ice with a franchise first to their name on Wednesday night. But not the kind they’d like.
By way of their 3-0 loss to
Braden Holtby and the Capitals, Washington took the season series with a sweep, and shutout the Bruins in all three games. In 91 years of Bruins hockey, and with the definition of the term ‘series’ put into context with that stat (three games), that’s straight-up never happened. Actually, that goes beyond the Bruins, too, as no other NHL team has ever done this.
And this one, despite what the box score will tell you in terms of shots, wasn’t even close, either.
Washington defenseman
John Carlson scored the game’s first goal, and put an end to his 10-game goal drought in the process. The goal, Carlson’s 12th of the year and his first since Mar. 15 against (you guessed it) the Bruins, put the Caps up by one just 4:49 into the first period, started with some questionable own-zone effort from the Black and Gold. Neither
Milan Lucic nor
David Pastrnak were able to chip the puck up and out of danger, and it was an ensuing cross-ice feed from the absolutely devastatingly accurate passer
Nicklas Backstrom that went through both
David Krejci and
Torey Krug to find a streaking Carlson. He didn’t miss.
The Capitals extended their lead out to 2-0 just 2:17 later, as
Matt Niskanen connected for his fourth goal of the season, and his first in 20 games. And again, it was more of the same from the B’s. In a battle for the puck along the boards with Backstrom,
Matt Bartkowski’s chip went without a careful corral from
Patrice Bergeron and
Brad Marchand, and ended up on Niskaken’s blade and in the back of their net for an early two-goal hole against one of the league’s top goalies.
Maybe Bartkowski put too much into that attempt. Or maybe Bergeron and Marchand didn’t extend themselves enough to prevent that puck from making its way to the blue line. Either way, it came back to the Bruins’ utter disorganization in their end. And it was a result of the Caps’ high-speed attack.
The Bruins themselves find that this theory is blown out of proportion, but when teams attack the B’s defense with a hard forecheck, the puck tends to end up on the opposition’s stick. And in a year where the five-man chemistry between the defense and forwards on ice has been a constant work in progress, this is still the case, even in the 80th game of the regular season. It’s honestly their biggest flaw.
Boston had two great second-period looks with breakaway bids from
Loui Eriksson and
Milan Lucic but Holtby stood tall, and
Marcus Johansson extended the Capitals’ edge out to three with his 20th goal of the season, scored with just 2:13 remaining in the middle frame.
Shockingly, a five-shot third period kept the Bruins off the board, and thus extended Braden Holtby’s shutout streak over the Bruins, which dates back to last year, to an absurd 186:43.
Despite the loss, the 95-point Bruins exited the night still in control of the last playoff seed in the Eastern Conference, but without a game in hand in their favor, could fall out into ninth if the fellow 95-pointer Ottawa Senators upset the N.Y. Rangers tomorrow night and the B’s fall to Florida Panthers.
Random thoughts and notes
- There’s tweaking lines. And then there’s absolutely blowing them up like
Claude Julien, in the middle of a five-game winning streak, did with the Bruins. Why exactly? I still really don’t know.
OK, that’s not entirely true. The goal was to obviously get
David Krejci back into the mix as a center, and with his familiar linemates, Milan Lucic and David Pastrnak. This threw absolutely everything else out of whack, though. Loui Eriksson joined the Patrice Bergeron line opposite Brad Marchand. Ryan Spooner centered a third line with Chris Kelly on the left and Brett Connolly on the right. And that gave the Bruins a fourth line featuring Gregory Campbell, Carl Soderberg, and Reilly Smith.
That all changed with time and goals against, too. It changed beyond the point of understanding or even trying to explain, to be honest. But let’s try it anyway. At one point, the B’s dropped Pastrnak down to the fourth line with Campbell and Soderberg. Read as: a death sentence for one mistake in his own end. That put Smith on Spooner’s right wing. And moved Connolly up to the top line with Krejci and Lucic.
And with the Bruins down by three in the third, Julien reunited the line that carried the offense in March, putting Spooner back in the middle of Lucic and Pastrak, and the Bruins’ best shift of the night followed. Shocking, right? It’s Game 80, and tomorrow is Game 81, so expecting the Boston coaching staff to change overnight is a mere wish at this point. But seriously, you can’t even justify benching the ‘kids’ at this point. Yes, they’re going to make mistakes, but if you don’t find a way to trust them now, you’re never going to. And that’s setting them up for long-term failure. It’s that simple.
It’s funny, too, because even at their worst in their own end, they really are not
that bad. (At least compared to everything else you’ve seen from a revolving door of B’s lines this season.)
- On another roster note. Care to make a guess as to who finished fourth among forwards in time-on-ice tonight? Lucic? Nope. Connolly? Nah. How about Krejci? Haha, no. Kelly? You wish. The correct answer, at 15:30, just 17 seconds less than Brad Marchand, is Gregory Campbell. The same Gregory Campbell that, y’know, was a healthy scratch in Boston’s 50-shot, shootout win over the Leafs last Saturday.
Inexcusable. Indefensible, too. With their playoff hopes very much at stake, and with head coach Claude Julien’s job realistically on the line depending on how this team finishes, giving No. 11 that sort of leash borders on legitimately unbelievable. Is there
anything that Campbell has shown you this season that warrants that sort of ice time? Especially as of late? Absolutely not. Actually absurd.
Campbell finished tonight’s game with a team-worst 33% Corsi-For% at even-strength.
- This was Washington’s first season-series sweep of the Bruins since 1982-83.
Up next
The Bruins are back at it tomorrow as they wrap up their season series with the Florida Panthers at BB&T Center in Sunrise. The Black and Gold have won two of three against the ‘Cats this season (their lone loss came in Florida’s barn), and I’m sure there’s nothing that the Panthers would like more than to complicate Boston’s playoff hopes with a season-series splitting wint. It’s the closest thing that the Panthers, who were basically eliminated by way of their loss to the Bruins last week, can get to revenge.
Ty Anderson has been covering the Boston Bruins for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, is a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • 
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