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Bruins drop 10th straight; Bancroft signs |
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Ty Anderson
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In the basement of the Eastern Conference in April for the first time in nearly 30 years, Thursday night saw the Bruins get cozy at the bottom, with a 4-1 loss to the Canadiens at the Bell Centre.
The defeat marked the Black and Gold’s 10th straight defeat, putting the Bruins on their first winless stretch of at least 10 games since 2010, and just their fourth since 1976.
Playing to a scoreless draw through 20 minutes of play, the Bruins were put in a 2-0 hole in the middle frame with strikes from Christian Dvorak and Cole Caufield.
The Montreal goals were sandwiched around a plethora of absolutely dazzling stops from Jeremy Swayman, but those stops failed to galvanize the Bruins with any sort of push the other, and the Bruins ended the middle frame with just two shots on goal compared to the 17 that the Canadiens landed on goal in the period.
A giveaway to Brendan Gallagher early in the third period allowed the Canadiens to push their lead out to three, and though the Bruins finally countered with an Elias Lindholm marker, the damage was already done against a relatively punchless Bruins attack.
With the goal, Lindholm bumped his way up to 39 points on the season, moving him out of a tie with David Backes (2016-17) and into a deadlock with Morgan Geekie (2023-24) for the most second-most points by any Don Sweeney UFA signing. (Erik Haula leads the way on that front, in case you’re curious, with 44 points in his first and only season with the Bruins.)
In goal, Swayman took the loss behind a 28-of-31 performance in the B’s crease.
And with the loss, the Bruins saw a 16-game point streak against the Canadiens come to an end, with Thursday’s result marking the first regulation loss to Montreal since Nov. 5, 2019.
The Bruins will return to Boston for a Saturday night showdown with the Hurricanes.
Bruins ink Bancroft to entry-level deal
A signing spree of a spring for Bruins general manager Don Sweeney continued on Thursday.
But the latest move for the Bruins came from outside of their drafted pipeline, with Cornell standout and NCAA free agent Dalton Bancroft inked to a one-year, entry-level deal by the Bruins.
Bancroft’s deal, which will begin next season, comes with a $950,000 cap hit at the NHL level.
A three-year player for Cornell, the 6-foot-3, 207-pound Bancroft is jumping to the pro game after posting 15 goals (a college career-high for him) and 27 points in 36 games for the Big Red, and 36 goals and 79 points in 103 total games for the program from 2022 through 2025.
Prior to this time at Cornell, Bancroft skated in the OJHL, and actually captured OJHL MVP honors in 2021-22 behind a campaign that featured 37 goals and 92 points in 54 games for the Trenton Golden Hawks. (The OJHL is a step below the Ontario Hockey League in the Canadian junior program ‘tiers’.)
And though he was not someone the Bruins drafted — as was the case for their previous signings this spring with Ty Gallagher, Jake Schmaltz, and then Dans Locmelis — Bancroft does have some familiarity with the Bruins organization after taking part in the club’s development camp last summer.
Bancroft also has hockey bloodlines, with his father Steve having been a first-round pick of the Maple Leafs back in 1989 and having a pro career that ran for 16 years, including a season as a member of the P-Bruins squad that ultimately won the Calder Cup in 1999.
As for the newest Bancroft in the fold for the Black and Gold, this is a player who has shown that he can play a solid offensive game and has a work ethic that can make him a threat in the attacking zone.
But given his age (24) and where he’s played to this path, the development path is going to be interesting, and it’s more likely that he’ll have to be a details-oriented player who uses his size if he’s going to fast-track his way to the NHL, and most likely in a bottom-six role where scoring is perhaps a bonus.
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