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It wasn’t for a lack of trying, but the Boston Bruins continued to stumble out of the gate on the new calendar year behind a 3-2 final against the East-best Washington Capitals at TD Garden on Tuesday.
With their fifth loss in the last six games official, the B’s are out of moral victories, but there’s definite pluses that come with a valiant final push against a Capitals club that may be the best in the league.
“There’s no moral victory,” coach Claude Julien said. “I can’t criticize the effort our team gave tonight.
“In the situation we’re in we almost had to play a perfect game to beat those guys and I think we gave ourselves a chance there. I don’t think we ever quit when we were down a goal, down two came back into it, down two again came back and you know made a big save on Zee at the end in order to keep that game from being tied,” Julien continued. “I think our guys tried - really tried - but at the same time you know in this league you got to win hockey games so we got to be disappointed, we got to be maybe hungrier for next game so that we can turn things around here and hopefully the bitterness in our mouth from losing tonight is going to carry into New Jersey.”
Washington forward
Andre Burakovsky opened up the game’s scoring with his fourth goal of the season (and his second in his last four games after going 25 straight games without a goal) at the 15:01 mark of the first period. The Capitals pushed that out to 2-0 midway through the second period with a power-play marker of a snipe from the lethal
Evgeny Kuznetsov.
Down by two goals against the Bruins’ Boogeyman -- all-world netminder
Braden Holtby -- the B’s seemed dead in the water. That was until a brilliant feed from
Brett Connolly to
Loui Eriksson brought the Bruins within one at the 15:26 mark of the second period.
With a tie game in their sights, the Bruins were crushed back down to a reality against a Capitals squad they’ve yet to beat since Mar. 2014 with
Marcus Johansson’s 10th goal of the season 10:41 into the third period. Johansson’s goal, scored at the front of the net as he jammed and jammed away with Boston defenseman
Dennis Seidenberg, would hold as the game-winner in the Caps’ ninth win in their last 11 games played. Even after Patrice Bergeron brought the B’s back within one.
“I think we have to find ways to generate more goals, more chances,” Bergeron, who finished the night with two points (one goal, one assist), said. “I thought it was a much better effort but still not good enough you know. At the end of the day you need to get wins and the standings are way too tight to let games like that slip by. But we have to realize that it was a better effort and hopefully we can you know move and be a little better again next game and you know get back on the winning column.”
There’s no way around acknowledging an improved effort from a Boston club that basically sleepwalked through the Winter Classic, but still, the Bruins need to find ways to earn points in 2016.
“You always want to try to take away positives,” B’s defender
Torey Krug said. “It’s tough because we’re so committed to winning and looking at results, but this point in the season we’ve got to start fine tuning our game and trying to come away with points because our standings are so tight. We’ll take the positives and just carry it into the next one, but we’ve got to start getting results.”
With the 25-of-27 effort, Holtby improved to 17-0-2 in his last 19 decisions. Insanity.
McQuaid exits early, no update from Bruins
The obvious blow in this one came with the departure of
Adam McQuaid following a somehow unpenalized board from the Caps’
Zach Sill in the second period.
“They felt that… they didn’t I guess seem to get a good look at it or just seemed to think it was maybe two minutes at best or you know – I had the luxury of going back to my office and looking at the replay,” Julien said of the refs’ non-call on the hit that knocked McQuaid out of action. “Obviously for me there should have been a call there but you know we’ll see how the league deems it. It was definitely a hit from behind in my book but we’ll let the other people take care of it as always.”
With McQuaid out of action, the Bruins were forced to roll with five defenseman against a Capitals team that pushed the pace against a flat-footed B’s defense all night long.
“Our D’s did a decent job but again the goals that they scored, we still got to be better,” Julien said of the rotating five-man unit. “We got to win those battles in front of the net. We can’t let those passes go through our… I guess our defensive layer on that first goal. You know if we do our job properly that pass doesn't get through. There’s mistakes being made but as I mentioned earlier when you give that team those kind of opportunities they’re pretty good at burying them.”
The Bruins did not have an update on McQuaid following the game.
Up next
The Bruins embark on a five-game road swing that begins with a Friday night battle with the New Jersey Devils. The B’s took the prior head-to-head against Cory Schneider and the Devs via the shootout.
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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