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Bruins interim head coach Joe Sacco summed it best on Thursday night when he said that for 41 minutes, the Bruins played OK.
Unfortunately for Sacco and the Bruins though, the NBA’s Adam Silver is nowhere in sight and NHL games are still 60 minutes, and it was the final 19 minutes that caused the Bruins more pain en route to a 6-2 loss to the Jets at TD Garden.
And for the Bruins, the latest setback came in familiar fashion, as the Bruins battled their way back with a shorthanded snipe from Elias Lindholm to tie things up in the third period… only to surrender two goals on the next two Winnipeg shots faced.
This latest bang-bang in the back of the Boston net came a strike from the Jets’ Mark Scheifele just 24 seconds after the Bruins tied the game, and with an insurance marker from Nikolaj Ehlers (but really what was essentially an own-goal from the Bruins’ Mason Lohrei) just 42 seconds after the Scheifele goal.
Mason Lohrei cuts in front of an open net and a pokecheck extends Winnipeg's lead to two pic.twitter.com/6sDVclsxGo
In the blink of an eye, the Bruins turned what was shaping up to be their most important third period of the season to date into yet another embarrassing display.
It’s been a problem for the Bruins all season long — whether it’s goal in quick succession or goals late in periods — and the Bruins are running out of time to stop the bleeding before this season slips out of their own control.
“Well, you have to be mentally strong, right? I mean, there's stuff that happens during the course of a game,” Sacco said. “It's not always going to go your way.
“You don't always have momentum. The momentum shifts during the course of the game are going to happen. I mean, they're going to drag some ice. It's going to pull our way sometimes, but we just have to find a way as a group to really be mentally strong. Like I said, even when they make it 3-2 there, it's okay, there's lots of time left. Yeah, we'd like to kill the rest of that power playoff, but that's okay. We're only down a goal and I felt like we played a decent game up to that point. So it's just about focusing on the next play and the next shift and hit the reset button. So that's something that we have to continue to work on and get better at.”
Bruins’ postseason path takes notable hit
The Bruins do not want to sell.
In fact, they have never sold at the trade deadline under current team president Cam Neely. The very worst they’ve been is ‘light buyers’, with a single addition in 2017 (Drew Stafford for a late-round pick). But earlier this month, Neely acknowledged the possibility of his team having to venture down the non-buyer path (he called it a ‘retool’). But with the Bruins on the wrong end of yet another lopsided contest Thursday night in Boston, that’s looking more and more like an inevitability for this year’s team.
When Neely first made those comments, the Bruins were coming off back-to-back victories, and against quality competition. The Bruins were also still in a playoff position, with a single-point lead over the single wild card and a two-point lead over the ninth-place club in the East. Boston’s record post-Neely comments sits, though, sits at 3-3-1, and the Bruins will begin Friday on the outside looking in in the Eastern Conference playoff race, and with a games played number that doesn’t favor ’em in any respect.
That’s trouble, and the Bruins know they’re running out of time to show otherwise.
Following wins by the teams around the Bruins in the playoff race — the Lightning, Senators, and Blue Jackets all won on Thursday night, while the Islanders (winners of six straight) have now entered the conversation as a threat — the Bruins have put themselves in a spot where it truly feels like life or death for their season with that night’s result. Thursday’s slate dropped the Bruins’ odds of making the playoffs down to 29 percent at PlayoffStatus.com while MoneyPuck puts them at 19.1 percent. MoneyPuck’s model only has four Eastern Conference teams with worse odds than the Bruins as of right now, with the Canadiens at 13.7 percent, Philly at 3.5 percent, Pittsburgh at 1.5 percent, and Buffalo at 0.8 percent.
It’s entirely possible that the hole has officially been dug too deep for the Black and Gold.
Up next: The Bruins will host the Rangers in a 3:30 p.m. tilt on Saturday.
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