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For the second year in a row, the Bruins lost when it mattered the most, committed the almost-always-deadly sin when they took their fate out of their own hands, and wound up on the outside looking in of the Eastern Conference playoff picture by just a single victory.
Welcome to the Morning, er-- Mourning, After.
It’s easy to dissect where the Bruins went wrong over the course of their 82-game season, but that’s a topic for another day (quite literally), so let’s just focus on what went wrong in Game No. 82.
The day begins (and ends) with the absence of No. 1 goaltender, Tuukka Rask.
Sick, Rask gingerly skated in the B’s pregame skate, and was relegated to (mainly) stretching. There were times where Rask began to skate, but would lean against the bench, stretch, and then lightly skate. Rask even took a few pucks in the crease, but hardly moved, and was clearly going through a fierce bout of something. That forced Jeremy Smith to Boston on an emergency recall (Smith arrived during the pregame skate, I think), and Jonas Gustavsson into the net as the starter.
When it all fell apart for the Black and Gold in the opening 10 minutes of the second period -- or when Gustavsson allowed four goals on just 12 shots against -- you missed Rask. Not to suggest that it’s an automatic that Rask stops the bleeding at two versus four (nobody was stopping that Zack Smith deflection), but it was the moment when you realized that the B’s could have used Rask between the pipes. By the time the fourth goal had gone into the Boston crease, Gustavsson was at 29 shots against. That’s a 30-minute workload that No. 50 is not as equipped to handle as his Finnish teammate.
“I don’t think that played any role, to be honest,… B’s defenseman Torey Krug said of the goaltending situation. “We obviously know Goose has won us some games here, stolen us some points. He kept us in the first period, and then it fell on our shoulders to come out and respond in the second, and we came out and just failed in the second period, and then from there, it was too much chasing.…
Krug is right in the sense that it’s not Gustavsson’s fault that the Bruins lost. He stopped all 17 shots against in a first period that could have very well ended with the Bruins trailing by multiple goals. So maybe it’s true, and maybe this game ends 5-1 instead of 6-1 if it’s Rask in the cage, but still, when the Bruins needed to be at their best, they did not have their best in net. That’s a tough pill to swallow.
In front of Rask, the year-long nightmare of the B’s defense did not come through with the help Gustavsson (and Rask, had he been in the crease) needed. All year long, it’s been too easy for teams to camp in front of the Boston net -- which is weird on a defense featuring big-bodied tanks like Zdeno Chara, Adam McQuaid, and Kevan Miller -- or pick off their passes on attempted zone exits.
And up front, the Bruins received bupkus from their forwards.
David Pastrnak came through with his 15th goal of the season (and his third in the last four games), but beyond that, what did the Bruins get from their forwards? Deadline pickup Lee Stempniak finished the game with just one shot on goal in over 16 minutes of time on ice. Both Loui Eriksson and Patrice Bergeron put four shots on net, but failed to put one by Andrew Hammond. Matt Beleskey, a player that gave you everything in his bucket on almost every single shift this year (and Saturday was no exception), had a team-high five shots.
It just felt, like it had for too many nights to count this year, that the B’s sticks were just out of reach.
“It wasn’t urgency, I think it was execution,… Claude Julien said after the defeat.
And in the blame game of Game No. 82, no one is safe. Not even Julien. While I think Julien did an admirable job coaching this team to the playoff picture given what he was worked with, two things that stood out in this game that I thought made -- or could have made -- the difference for Boston’s fate.
The first came in that four-goal, 10-minute barrage from the Senators.
Given the way the Bruins were getting straight-up mobbed in their own end, I think it would have been for Julien to call his timeout following the Sens’ third goal. At that point, you’ve surrendered three unanswered goals, but you’re still down by just two, though the game is close to getting out of hand. A timeout at that point could have settled down a Bruins club that’s had a knack for letting their mistakes compound into more goals against. Instead, the Bruins do not take the timeout, and elect to use theirs after Mika Zibanejad scored the fourth goal and basically closed the door on Boston.
This non-call from Julien is doubly frustrating when you see how the Bruins responded after that timeout at 10:00 of the second period, as they held the Senators without a shot for the next 17:32.
The second issue came in the third period, when Julien, in desperation mode, opted to pull Gustavsson for the extra-attacker on a power play midway through what would be the final period of the season. To make it clear, the problem is not with the concept of pulling the goaltender. The Bruins had to do that in that situation, or close to it, I think. But rather, the problem was with how the situation was handled in the moment right before the J.G. Pageau empty-net strike that made this a 5-1 game.
With Bergeron on the bench after a lengthy shift, the Bruins put Ryan Spooner, who has struggled at the dot all season long, out for the key offensive zone faceoff with his net empty. Spooner loses the draw, loses the battle for the loose puck (with help from Stempniak), and Pageau scores. In that situation, you want Bergeron at the dot. And if not, I think you want Gustavsson back in net.
Coaches will always find the right opportunity to give a player a chance to earn his trust, but at that point, and with the year hanging in the balance, I’m not sure that it was a great time and/or situation for No. 51 to take that draw. At least with Gustavsson on the bench along with your faceoff ace.
“We all have to accept responsibility here,… admitted Julien of the disappointing 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.…
Just about every person in that room shares the blame for this collapse, really, and will have yet another summer to think about what could have been as they watch the postseason from the sidelines. Again.
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.