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The Boston Bruins are just two games into the year and already, they’re a disaster and the sky is falling. Or so you’re led to believe. It’s funny to read articles from outsiders that refer to the Bruins as a team in the midst of a ‘full rebuild’. I, unfortunately, must have been busy on the day of that press release.
Full rebuild or a team currently playing without its captain/best defenseman; Mere semantics, I suppose.
“We’re definitely young, we know why, so there’s no doubt that played a part in our game tonight. But we’ve got to get better in certain areas, we’ve got to keep working on and those young guys are going to get better if they keep playing and getting some experience,” Bruins coach
Claude Julien said after last night’s 4-2 loss to the Montreal Canadiens, their sixth in a row to the rival Habs, bumping them to 0-2-0 on the year. “We’re going through some growing pains and the thing I liked is no matter what we stayed with it, we killed a lot of penalties in the third period, we got another goal to try and get ourselves back into it. I thought the guys kind of at least had the right attitude whether we did it right or wrong hockey wise, we had the right attitude to try and at least keep ourselves in this game.”
It’s been an ugly two games for the Black and Gold, with the Bruins giving up a six-spot on Thursday and four-spot on Sat. night and scoring just two goals of their own in each contest, nobody can deny that. But it’s impossible to judge this team as anything close to a finished product at this very moment.
The truth is that none of us have any clue how the Bruins will play this season until
Zdeno Chara plays a game for the club. He is without a doubt the most important piece of the puzzle for the B’s, and the last two games have proved that to be the case.
Matt Irwin, who was placed on waivers early this morning, has been a disaster of a ‘veteran presence’ for the B’s young blue line.
In fact, there’s not a single calming presence out there from any of the B’s three defensive pairings and eight defensemen on the roster. The 6-foot-5
Adam McQuaid, historically a regular on the third-pairing for the Bruins, to his credit, has been the closest thing to that through two contests.
Given the strides you thought you saw from the B’s defense corps through training camp, it’s come as a shock to the system for a Boston point that’s simply tripping over their themselves at every turn.
“We had a good training camp I thought in terms of bringing the team together and making sure we’re all on the same page and we have the same mission and goals,” Boston defenseman
Torey Krug said of the team’s struggles through two. “I think just within a game there are mistakes that are just big time and they’re ending up in the back of our net. So I think guys are preparing well, we just have to make sure we limit those huge mistakes that are ending up in the back of our net.”
Through two games, you’ve just seen too much of, well, everything bad. Forwards are getting behind defensemen without much resistance, the defenders are taking bad, out-of-position penalties, and the timing of their pinches at the other end of the rink have been questionable at best. It’s all led to a shooting gallery on Boston netminder
Tuukka Rask, who has been completely under siege with shots from prime scoring opportunities from between the circles all season long.
You can’t help but feel as if the opposition’s looks are not as common with No. 33 back there.
But the B’s struggles go beyond the absence of Chara, of course.
Up front, the Bruins have 0-0-0s from all but four of their 13 forwards. Their production has come from their first line -- Matt Beleskey, David Krejci, and David Pastrnak -- while
Patrice Bergeron became the only non-first liner to contribute for the B’s on the statsheet with a power-play goal last night. The Bergeron line was dealt a massive blow on Sat. night, too, with
Brad Marchand suffering a concussion, and the Bruins’ third of Jimmy Hayes, Brett Connolly, and Ryan Spooner has been a complete and total non-factor for the Bruins since (basically) the first day of training camp.
Just about everything that could go wrong through 120 minutes has for the Black and Gold. With the exception of their first period of the season, it’s been a nightmare. So, 100 bad minutes, really.
At the risk of sounding like a PSA, it will get better for the Bruins than it’s been through two games.
Their forward grouping is still an apparent work in progress, with some missing pieces yet to plug into the right spot, and given the other teams out there currently skating without a win to their name in two cracks -- the Los Angeles Kings and Pittsburgh Penguins come to mind -- worrying is absurd.
And at the end of the day, they’re still just
two games in. They still have another 80 to go.
Declaring a team ‘dead’ and ‘rebuilding’ after two games without their best defenseman -- and perhaps two of their best three defensemen if you include Dennis Seidenberg -- is laughable.
“It’s different because maybe we’re so used to things going our way, and even if we aren’t playing well, we’re still getting the bounces and things like that,” said Krug. “We’ve just got to make sure we continue to work through it, and different personalities are going to step up on the bench in different times, and we have a lot of new players that are going to have the ability to change the momentum of the game. If we manage that game a little bit better, and when they have a big shift we make sure we return with a big shift. So it’s things like that we’ll continue to work through.
“We’re going to grow as a group. By no means should anybody be perfect two games into the season.”
Ty Anderson has been covering the National Hockey League 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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