A quick glance at the box score and seeing a 3-2 New Jersey Devils victory may lead to you believe Thursday’s contest at TD Garden—the Bruins first at home since Jan. 28—was a competitive one.
But sometimes, numbers can be misleading, and, in this case, that certainly rings true.
The Bruins simply were not good Thursday as they were outworked, outhustled, and outplayed for a full 60 minutes.
Despite being without both Matt Grzelcyk and Jakub Zboril due to injuries, the Bruins were a fresh, rested team heading in their return to TD Garden. Four days had passed since their last contest, a 4-2 loss in Long Island on Saturday.
"You would think after four or five days of not playing, we would have been a hungrier team, but we weren't. We'll address that,” said head coach Bruce Cassidy. "We just didn't want to do what it took to get pucks back, win pucks, and hang onto pucks. As a result, they came at us and were the better team and looked better.”
Even with fresh legs and the comforts of playing on home ice and inside a building they had yet to lose in, the Bruins put forth an uninspiring effort, their ugliest of the young season.
“I think it was our inability to win one-on-one battles, to defend areas of the ice, to give them access to our zone, to not keep forecheck situations alive or even create them,” said Cassidy. “I just thought they were winning the races, the one-on-one battles.”
It wasn’t one single issue that plagued the Bruins Thursday, heck it wasn’t even a couple of them. It seemed every little aspect of what goes into being a successful hockey team wasn’t happening Thursday and it surely showed.
A three-goal second period was the highlight of the night for the Devils, led by Kyle Palmieri and his pair of goals.
One of Cassidy’s biggest frustrations in the loss was once his team trailed by two, they started to get too cute, passing up shot attempts for the chance to make the perfect play.
Nothing was perfect about the Bruins game Thursday; nothing was even close to perfect.
“It’s been an issue for our team here. We tend to overpass a little bit. Theres certain players that come around, and others we have to hammer away on. We’ll continue to do that,” said Cassidy.
“But the shooting part, once they’re on the ice, the execution falls on the player. We just have to buy in a little more. It was addressed. If we’re not, then we have to defend better than anybody in the National Hockey League every single night. Because it’s going to be a lot of 2-1 games if we’re not willing to put pucks on the net.”
Charlie Coyle, Jake DeBrusk, Nick Ritchie and Craig Smith combined for five shot attempts with three of those landing on net: two from Smith and one from DeBrusk which led to his first goal of the season.
“I don’t think anybody feels good about their game after that game,” said DeBrusk. "It was nice to score. Obviously would have liked to do it in a win. One of those tough games. Feel like I was part of the compete factor, was trying to get in on pucks, trying to get there. Just felt like I was losing a lot of battles tonight, to be honest with you."
Cassidy tinkered with his lines Thursday, hoping to get something going from his top-six as DeBrusk skated with Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron, and David Pastrnak skated with Ritchie and David Krejci.
But the revamped top-six failed to get much playing time together as David Krejci left the game with a lower-body injury after one second period shift.
Cassidy wouldn’t pin the Bruins struggles on the loss of Krejci.
"It's not an excuse. When it's a centerman, it's a little bit more juggling because it's a tough position to just plug a guy in from the wing,” said Cassidy. “We were hoping to take a look at some different combinations, obviously that goes out the window fairly quickly when you have to make do and get yourself back in the game.”
Krejci’s status for Sunday’s game against Philadelphia at Lake Tahoe is unknown. The Bruins are off on Friday as they travel to Tahoe for the contest.
"[Jack Studnicka's] a centerman that we've used on the wing but has played predominantly center," said Cassidy. "Or you move [Frederic] into the middle. [Greg] McKegg is a centerman. There's some different guys that we'll look at. We'll discuss that and see how David is."
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