As strange as it may sound, having a bad 24-hour stretch of unusual happenings and disappointments has become common for the Boston Bruins in 2013. It began with the club’s acquisition and subsequent oops-just-kidding! of Jarome Iginla on the heels of a 6-5 loss to the Montreal Canadiens for first place in the Northeast Division. Enraging an already agitated fan base, you could call it the nightmare 24 for the Black-and-Gold.
So, what do you call this, The Nightmare 24 II: The Return?
On Wednesday night, there was a solid amount to be pumped about when it came to the Bruins’ 5-4 victory over the New Jersey Devils. Sweeping the Devils for the season straight season (and winning 11 of their last 12 against New Jersey overall), and seeing signs of life from their offense while the penalty-kill stepped up in a major way, the bad news came with an elbow to the skull of the Bruins’
Brad Marchand courtesy of New Jersey blue-liner
Anton Volchenkov. Assessed a five-minute major, the loss of Boston’s leading goal-scorer woozily down the tunnel confirmed what everyone in the Hub feared to be the case; Marchand was yet another Bruin to suffer a concussion.
Joining linemate
Patrice Bergeron as another member of the Bruins’ battered, the loss of a 5-foot-9 winger that’s arguably been Boston’s most productive forward since April 2011 could simply not be understated. See: Last night’s game against the New York Islanders. Pushing
Danny Paille up to the team’s top-six, an exhausted-skating B’s squad could muster just one goal on 31 shots thrown at the Isles’
Evgeni Nabokov, putting a damper on what had been a pleasant three days that saw the Bruins put 11 goals by opposing netminders.
Prior to last night’s loss, the two-game outburst was the breakthrough the Bruins’ offense desperately needed, and it was the precursor to what you’d see with
Carl Soderberg’s imminent transfer from Sweden to Boston.
Well, hold the phone there...
Unfortunately for Boston in the now, who had at one point hoped for the 27-year-old Soderberg to be wiht the club by this weekend, the Swedish Ice Hockey Federation decided to block the 2012-13 Swedish Elite League’s leading scorer from coming over to don the Black-and-Gold right now. Essentially holding the 6-foot-3 forward hostage so that he can play for Sweden during the World Championships, and infuriating the Swede in the process, the Soderberg the Bruin chapter may have to wait until at least May 15 if Sweden has their say -- or perhaps Sept. 2013 if there’s no way for Soderberg and the B’s to work around the SIHF’s decision. So there you have it.
For Boston, bad news
does in fact come in threes, as all of this means that the Boston Bruins are a garbage team without a reason to finish this year, and with absolutely no chance of making a serious run towards their second Stanley Cup in three years.
Wait, what?
Are we seriously going to suggest that the Bruins -- even with the injuries to Bergeron and Marchand -- are not a club poised to make some noise in the playoffs this spring? Are we really going to ignore the fact that this was a Bruins club playing in their third game in four nights against the East’s hottest team in the New York Islanders (now with eight wins in their last ten games)? Are we to buy into the hyperbole and believe that the B’s are really at a disadvantage against any of their potential first round matchups in 2013 (be it as the No. 2 or No. 4 seed) despite the fact that they’ve gone a combined 15-4-1 against ‘em this year? All because of what, the B’s dropping two of the six games they’ve played in over the last ten days?
My God, are we really
this downright dumb in Boston?
A tip: Stop listening to talk radio and its idiotic callers that base their entire opinion on the Boston Bruins based on how the Red Sox and Patriots are/have been run as if the sports and its personnel moves are anything even close to comparable. Stop reading the blogs calling for the heads of players on a roster that’s recorded the fifth most points in the entire league while scoring 27 more goals than their opponents. Have some juice, maybe eat some fruit (but not a grapefruit because grapefruit is disgusting), and relax, because things are not nearly as bad as you believe.
It was a well known fact that the month of March was going to be hell on the skates of the B’s. They had an easy start to the 48-game season, with just 17 games in their first 41 days of the season, but would ultimately pay with a grueling March and April that put them in line for 31 games in 58 days. In just two months, the Bruins went from averaging a game every 2.41 days to one every 1.87 days.
Was a dip in the play not expected for a Boston roster that had the most skaters in the league playing overseas to stay in shape during the NHL lockout? If not, what brand of deer antler spray did you plan on bringing to the Bruins’ locker room?
The schedule isn't a cop out for poor play, it’s a reality of the club’s downright miserable schedule as of late, and the reality of a league that’s been operating at ludicrous speed since the end of a near four-month long lockout.
“You can ask me if I’m tired of that or I can ask you if you’re tired of asking,” Boston captain
Zdeno Chara said last night when asked about being tired of answering questions regarding the Bruins’ fatigue. “Like I’ve been saying, everybody knew that it’s going to be heavy, that it’s going to be a lot of games in a short period of time. But now we’re coming towards the end of the season and, yeah, it’s not easy, but like I’ve been saying, it’s not an excuse. Everybody has the same schedule. I think we are in a good spot, we just need to get better in certain areas of our game and make sure that we get everything that we need going into the playoffs.”
Bingo. With a condensed season heavy on division matchups and keeping you within your conference throughout the year, every team has been forced to soldier through a number of injuries, every team has struggled for at least a week or so this year, and the Bruins are no exception.
“It’s not going to be perfect season. I don’t think anybody has a perfect season, and those teams that do have, well, good for them. You can’t play perfect season. That’s just the way it goes,” Chara said, adding, “You’re going to have some tough stretches. I thought the last few games—a number of games—we battled through them. I thought tonight we really battled hard, we really did. It was the third game in four nights. You could tell that we were towards the end maybe running a little bit out of energy, but I thought we started the game really well.”
With the loss, the Bruins have now dropped two of their last (gasp) six games, prompting pure panic in the Hub, seemingly ignoring the fact that every team in this league would take the Bruins’
problems. The Bruins’ lackadaisical defensive efforts? Fixable. The off-and-on scoring? Given the Bruins’ depth up front and pending (and hopeful) return of Bergeron and Marchand, more than fixable. And the goaltending? Well, that’s been outstanding despite the recent win/losses figures for both Rask and Khudobin.
On top of it all, late-season slumps should be nothin’ new to a Boston crowd that witnessed the 2010-11 Bruins finish their season with just 10 wins in the final 20 games of the year.
So, what’s the problem in Boston? Outside of expectations of being a 48-game juggernaut boasting a roster of 20 guys that score 35-40 goals a year, I’m not sure.
When it comes to the Boston Bruins and how they’ll fare in the 2013 playoffs, it comes down to two things: the health of Patrice Bergeron (who worked out today and will travel with the team to Carolina) and the goaltending of Tuukka Rask. If there’s ever a city to know that Cup’s aren’t won and lost by a hot streak in January or cold streak in April, it’s Boston, so for the love of Orr, pipe down 'til there's real danger on the way, let it all play out, or make your way to Fenway. For your own health.
OK, and my sanity.
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