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The Boston Bruins threw it all at
Scott Darling and the Chicago Blackhawks, but it all seemed within reach for the 6-foot-6 netminder, as the ‘Hawks downed the Bruins by a 3-2 final at TD Garden.
In
Zdeno Chara’s first game since Oct. 23 (19 games ago), things did not go as planned for the Black and Gold, as the Blackhawks scored the game’s first three goals.
The first came 9:10 into the first period, when rookie defenseman
Klas Dahlbeck scored the first goal of his career, beating
Tuukka Rask on a one-timer. Chicago’s second goal of the night came nine and a half minutes after that, with the Blackhawks swarming the Boston zone and
Ben Smith capitalizing on a rushed
Torey Krug fling around the endboards to nobody (or Dan Carcillo). Holding a 2-0 edge through 20 minutes of play, the Blackhawks scored their third goal of the night when the B’s gave
Patrick Kane way too much time and space (along with an empty cage and
Milan Lucic just, you know, chillin’ about five feet away), giving Kane his 13th goal of the season.
Boston’s three-goal hole wasn’t for a lack of trying, though.
They simply couldn’t keep up with the Blackhawks’ pace and ability to find loose pucks. It seemed that the ‘Hawks had support from all angles, too. 3-on-3s through the neutral zone became 4-on-3s with quick thinking from their defensemen. Support along the walls in 1-on-1 battles came within nanoseconds, and Chicago’s idea of ‘safe plays’ were more often d-to-d passes versus dump ins to nobody. The Blackhawks roll four lines, all the time. Their defense is deeper than yours. Their top-six is more skilled than yours. Heck, their bottom-six is more talented than yours. They are as well-oiled a machine as anybody in this league.
And you simply can’t make as many defensive-zone errors, or mistakes in transition as the Bruins did, and beat these guys. That’s something that head coach
Claude Julien admitted, too.
“I think the effort was there from start to finish, but as you could see in that first period, the execution was poor. We mentioned it in the room – a three on one you don’t get a shot – you almost got an open net there, you tip it over the net,” Julien said after the loss. “We’ve got to get better in those areas if we want to start winning some hockey games. Because other than that, what can you say about your hockey club – they competed hard all night, they did the things they had to do, had to kill two five-on-three power plays, and you know, they did a good job of that. But at the end of the night they come out empty handed. If we’re going to get some points I think those are two areas that is going to have to improve.”
The B’s would make it a game, however, with a second period goal from
Reilly Smith and a third period strike from
Torey Krug. The Bruins’ first goal was a product of Smith’s recent hot streak, which now gives the 23-year-old an impressive three goals and five points in his last three games played.
And on the B’s second goal, it was a head of steam from
Milan Lucic that sparked the rush, and ultimately put the puck on Krug’s blade all alone. And that, my friends, is the Milan Lucic the Bruins have been craving. He takes the puck, powers through about three Blackhawk skaters, drags the play to the corner and then finds Krug in alone.
That play showed everything the Black and Gold have come to expect out of their $6 million winger, and something they simply haven’t seen enough of this year.
“Those are the kind of efforts we need to win some hockey games here,” Julien said of Lucic’s battering ram-esque play on the goal. “So, we need more of that. From everybody.”
Boston found a spark on the goal, too, which ended with some fireworks, headlined by
Chris Kelly dropping the gloves with Chicago’s
Andrew Shaw.
But even with the momentum on their side, and even though they held the ‘Hawks to just two shots in the third, the B’s could not put the equalizer by Darling, falling for the fourth time in their five last contests.
The optimist is happy that the Bruins fell to a simply dominant Blackhawks team (Chicago’s win was their eighth in a row, by the way) by just one goal, especially with
David Krejci still out of the lineup. The pessimist (or perhaps the realest), looks at this loss as yet another missed opportunity.
With the loss, the Bruins now have six one-goal losses to their name in 2014-15 (that’s not counting any overtime/shootout losses), tied for the third-most in the league. They had eight one-goal losses all of last year (though it’s certainly tough to compare a Presidents’ Trophy season to this one), and had seven in the lockout-shortened 2013 season. They’re letting points continue slip out of reach at an alarming rate, and they’re still just two points ahead of the Florida Panthers for the final wild card spot in the Eastern Conference. As noted on numerous occasions now, the Panthers have games in hand (three, to be exact).
Said it once, said it a thousand times-- At a certain point, you need to find a way to steal points.
Chara returns to ice
The big story in this was obviously the return of Boston’s giant,
Zdeno Chara.
In 24:11 of time on ice, the 37-year-old racked up two hits, one shot on goal, and four minutes in penalties, all while going toe-to-toe with the Blackhawks’ best (as usual). It’s clear that Chara wasn’t at 100 percent -- either health wise or conditioning wise -- but just
seeing No. 33 back out there was great for Boston.
“It was exciting to be playing a game, that’s for sure. You know, there’s no secret that I felt the absence of missing a good chunk of time,” Chara said after the loss. “But again, I’m not going to make excuses. Just you have those games that you have to break in and I’m looking forward to the next game to be better.
“It’s something that’s noticeable. You can practice as much as you want to but you will never replace the game situations or the way you’re going to be reading plays and so on. So yeah, I mean early on it was just one of those things that I was trying to really focus to make simple plays. Overall I was just really trying to compete every shift, work hard every shift, and that was my goal.”
Chara also returned to his post on the Bruins’ first power play unit up front, with his 6-foot-9 frame standing in front of the net, and blocking daylight out for the opposition, and nearly scored.
With Chara back, the B’s scratched
Matt Bartkowski and
Joe Morrow.
Seidenberg on Toews
In the second period,
Dennis Seidenberg delivered this thunderous hit on
Jonathan Toews (gif below), sending the internet in a predictable uproar.
Given a two-minute boarding penalty on the hit, the 33-year-old Seidenberg offered up his explanation on the incident after the loss.
“I pride myself on being a clean player and a hard player to play against, so when I went in on that one on one battle there, I thought I saw his right shoulder and at the last second he might have turned I don’t know,” Seidenberg said. “Obviously I never want to see a guy go into the boards like that.
“I would never want to hurt a guy. That’s the last thing on my mind. I like playing hard and winning my board battles and that’s about it.”
The 13-year pro has never been suspended in his NHL career, and it doesn’t seem like he’ll face one for this incident, either.
That’d surely sit right with Seidenberg’s coach, who sounded like a coach that put the onus on Toews.
“We need to start educating our players to protect themselves better. We keep turning our backs; we keep trying to curl away. A player’s job is to finish his check. So a player should know he’s going to be hit and I think it’s not about tonight, it’s about the whole league,” Julien said of the incident. “I’m one of those guys that have really put a lot of pressure on people that look at those kind of things and say listen, ‘It’s okay to take away those hits from behind when they’re warranted.’” Certainly don’t like seeing those kinds of things, but this is where it’s important to take care of ourselves.
“So, I view that five-on-three we’re going to close a gap quickly and Dennis [Seidenberg] is a strong individual. So, is he supposed to get weak because of that situation? Or he just plays to his strength. Again, I wasn’t happy. I looked at it, and it could be arguable, but from my end of it I think it’s what it is. Our guys need to finish their checks and sure, you’ve got to be careful, but I’m sure he knew that he was coming.”
If you’re asking me, Seidenberg was right for the two-minute minor, but anything more seems excessive. We’ve all seen this play before , whether it’s been through playing hockey or even watching hockey; Two players go for a loose puck, they both try to muscle one another off it, and somebody loses. Most of the time, however, the loser of that battle doesn’t faceplant into the boards.
And that’s where this one went off the rails.
This is a hit that seems like it was 90 percent a product of Seidenberg, a noted workout freak, being much stronger than his Chicago counterpart. In fact, Seidenberg found himself on the
opposite end of this type of play during the Bruins’ road swing last week. Seidenberg avoided the boards, though, so it was nothing more than a simple fall. I don’t want to sound like a neanderthal when I say this, but follow me here-- It happens, and the Toews/Seidenberg play simply had an unfortunate (and unlikely) end result.
And if there’s one thing you wanna gripe about when it comes to this play, look no further than the Chicago bench and medical staff, who allowed Toews to skate another shift mere moments after the hit. Toews was clearly rattled on the hit, and given his concussion history, that’s just a bad look for the ‘Hawks.
Up next
The Bruins are back at it on Saturday afternoon when they play host to the Ottawa Senators. This will be the second of five meetings between the Atlantic rivals in 2014-15. The Bruins won the first meeting, 4-2, back on Nov. 1. The Sens trail the Bruins by four points in the division, and come to Boston with just two wins in their last 10 games played (and just five wins in 15 road games this season).
Ty Anderson has been covering the Boston Bruins for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, is a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • 
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