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Uncharacteristic gaffes haunt Bruins in Pittsburgh |
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Ty Anderson
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It’s far too soon to become overly concerned or sound any alarms, but 11 games into the 2013-14 campaign, it’s beginning to look as if we’ve regretfully discovered the nasty habit of this year’s Boston Bruins squad.
And unfortunately, it’s the bad habits that are typically the hardest ones to break.
On the heels of absolutely crumbling against 41-year-old Martin Brodeurand the New Jersey Devils this past Saturday, snapping a two-year plus winning streak against the Devils after allowing four (yes, four) power-play goals to the Black-and-Red, the B’s took their talents to the always welcoming Consol Energy Center, where they essentially picked up where they left off.
Z, z, z.
Maybe their minds were in Boston, where the Red Sox downed the St. Louis Cardinals to capture their third World Series championship since 2004, or maybe they bought into their own talk of calling Wednesday night’s showdown with the Pittsburgh Penguins ‘just another game on the schedule’. No matter the reason, there’s no dancing around the fact that the Black-and-Gold simply stumbled, bumbled, and tumbled their way to a semi-hard fought loss in the Steel City.
For the B’s, the name of the game was inconsistency. Again.
Despite entering play with three losses in their last four games, the Penguins, led by all-world centermen Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, are not a team you can sleep on. Not now, not ever. Unlike say, a New Jersey or even a Tampa Bay, the Penguins are a team that will burn you if you let them hang around for too long, and that’s exactly what happened on Wednesday night. Actually, the Bruins were by all means lucky to not find themselves absolutely torched just 10 minutes into the night -- able to survive with Tuukka Rask’s early big time stops on Malkin, who was allowed incredibly easy access to the B’s zone. Malkin. Easy entry. Evgeni Malkin!
Ultimately though, the dam broke when Chris Kunitz parked himself in front of Rask on a second period power-play and banged home a rebound to put Pittsburgh on the board, and up 1-0 after two.
But Boston, led by Patrice Bergeron, knotted things up when No. 37 stepped in with an unbelievable deflection of a Dennis Seidenberg shot, setting the stage for a third period battle between Rask and the Pens’ polarizing netminder, Marc-Andre Fleury.
It was a battle that the Boston defense was seemingly intent on losing.
Headlined by a Torey Krug I-don’t-even-know-what-he-was-doing lapse at the blue-line that gave Brandon Sutter a clear lane and enough room to strike with his first of the season 11 minutes into the third period, the Bruins’ signed their own death certificate in Pittsburgh when an own-zone turnover gave notorious B’s killer Jussi Jokinen an easy goal off an interception that started with a dangerous Johnny Boychuk pass to center, putting the Pens up 3-1 with just two minutes and two seconds to go. Game. Set. Match. But not yet.
(Of course not.)
Predictably, the Bruins saw things slipping away, and decided to respond with a flurry of their own.
Flame-turned-Penguin-turned-Bruin Jarome Iginla struck 19 seconds later to bring the B’s within one, but a buzzer-beating attempt from top-liner David Krejci and company fell short, giving the Bruins their second straight loss, and first losing streak of the year.
The ending was different, with Boston becoming the aggressors late in the game opposed to early in the game, but the overall picture remained the same from Saturday’s debacle against the Devs. The B’s, a team consistently lauded for their 60-minute approach to the game, were not sharp for prolonged stretches in this one. Their forecheck was weak (and has been for some time), their defensemen were simply danced around by Pittsburgh’s plethora of skill players, and it honestly could’ve been a 10-2 showing had Rask not gotten off to such a strong start. As typical of a result of a regular season showdowns between the Bruins and Penguins it was, there’s plenty to be concerned about for Boston.
In essence, the Bruins have lost their last five periods of play.
As of late, they’ve straight up relied on the 26-year-old Rask to play at a superhuman level all game long, often failing to play the tight three-zone game that makes them unbearable for opponents. Their penalty-killing unit has been soft as can be (granted the Pens’ unit is like something out of an NHL06 Hero Line). And their wingers, aside from Iginla and Milan Lucic, have been a mess. Much of this obviously has to do with the loss of Loui Eriksson (concussion), but the reunion of Brad Marchand with Bergeron (albeit on the right wing opposed to the left) hasn’t yielded the results coach Claude Julien was looking for, but the club’s swapping in search for consistency has left fans with much to be desired. Through three Eriksson-less games, anyhow.
At the same time, however, you can’t ignore the obvious signs coming from the Penguins’ bench.
Much like the Bruins, the Penguins, losers in three of their last four and scoring just seven goals over that stretch, came into tonight’s game as a team looking to regain the consistency and offensive edge that’s made them a perennial Eastern Conference powerhouse. In a world of perfect analysis, it’s hard to label tonight’s game as a ‘statement game’ or ‘measuring stick’ given the status of both clubs along with the fact that we’re just a month (not even) into the year, but it wouldn’t have hurt to see the B’s rise to the challenge of stopping the Pens’ top guns like they did last spring.
Regular season? Day. Postseason? Night. And if we’ve learned anything about these titans’ showdowns, it’s that the Bruins have undoubtedly embraced the role of Dracula, for better or worse.
The silver lining in all of this is that the B’s will get yet another chance to get their game back to ‘normal’ in no time, as they’ll play host to a Halloween night affair with the Anaheim Ducks on Thursday night.
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