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In the midst of a season-long six-game road trip, it was a weekend split for the Boston Bruins. Some good. And by that mean, I mean great. Some bad. And by that, I mean an utter clownshow. The good, of course, was Boston’s coach-firing 4-2 decimation of the Minnesota Wild. And the bad, naturally, was their 6-5 defeat at the hands of the Detroit Red Wings at Joe Louis Arena on Sunday afternoon.
First, the positives.
Well, I guess you have to go with the obvious one:
Brad Marchand.
It feels like you talk about Marchand after every single Bruins game. But rightfully so.
With a shorthanded goal in Minnesota, and a goal eight seconds into Boston’s loss in Detroit (the fastest goal in B’s history), the 5-foot-9 sparkplug has officially matched his career-high in goals in a season with 28 (accomplished in 2011-12). What makes Marchand’s tallies even more impressive is both the consistency with which they’ve been scored (it took Marchand just 51 games to hit the 28-goal plateau) and the variety of those markers, too. (Marchand has 18 even-strength goals, five power-play strikes, and four shorthanded goals.) Saturday’s goal against the Wild gave Marchand goals in 11 of his last 12 games played, the first time such a feat had been accomplished since Teemu Selanne back in 1998-99, and the first time a Bruin had done that since Cam Neely in 1993-94. Not sure what, if any, record Marchand touched on with Sunday’s goal, but I’m sure it’s something absurd.
Marchand wasn’t the only one extending a goal streak, either, as
Loui Eriksson scored in both games as well, and pushed his run to three goals in the last three games (and 18 goals this season).
The goal in Minnesota was the 200th of Eriksson’s career, and while the 30-year-old is now at 201 in his NHL career, 50 of ‘em have come during his three-year tenure with the Bruins. He’s also just four tallies away from matching his Bruins-career high (22) with two weeks to go before the trade deadline. And while you can’t help but feel as if Eriksson is
still a goner come Feb. 29, he’s without question making it harder for Boston general manager
Don Sweeney to sell him off to a highest bidder in a trade market allegedly short on teams willing to spend first-round draft picks.
Some other positives?
Dennis Seidenberg scored his first goal in 100 games. No, really, that wasn’t an exaggeration, it’s been a 100 games. And
Joonas Kemppainen, back from a cameo with the Providence Bruins, scored his second goal of the season, a shorthanded game-tying tally, in Sunday’s eventual loss. I honestly thought Kemppainen’s banishment to the minors was the last we’d see of a player that came to North America with his offensive game still very much in Finland. But his response, even if it was for naught in a losing effort, shows a pulse in No. 41.
...Here come the negatives.
This was an ugly, ugly two-game stretch for the B’s own-zone game and attacking zone game. After making some much needed adjustments to survive against the Jets -- namely holding Winnipeg to just six shots in the final half of the game -- the Bruins surrendered a whopping 68 shots (33 against Minny, 35 against the Red Wings). Compared to a combined 41 shots of their own (19 against the Wild, and 22 versus Detroit). Ugly. In Sunday’s game against the Wings, especially. Detroit really held their own against the Bruins and limited them to almost nothing from prime scoring areas, and absolutely assaulted the Bruins from between the circles at the other end. Just relentless.
And obvious that comes back down to the biggest minus of ‘em all, and that’s the absence of
Patrice Bergeron with an undisclosed injury. Maybe Bergeron’s injury came from either the slash
Blake Wheeler threw his way, or the fight that eventually followed. But I have a feeling -- and I honestly have absolutely nothing to back this up (and I fully admit that) -- that this injury has been a lingering thing for Bergeron. There’s been an uptick in ‘maintenance days’ away from the practice rink and a decrease in minutes of late in regards to Boston’s three-zone monster.
It shouldn’t surprise you when I say this, but the Bruins are goin’ nowhere without Bergeron.
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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