The Boston Bruins lost to the Dallas Stars, 6-2, on Tuesday. If you hadn’t really been following either team, your reaction might be: “Well that makes sense, the Stars are a much better team.”
Maybe they are, but they hadn’t been playing like it. The Stars had lost 10 of their last 12 games. On top of that, their best player, Mikko Rantanen, was a late scratch due to illness. The Bruins, meanwhile, had won six in a row and eight of their last nine.
This should have been a competitive game. It wasn’t, though. Instead it wound up being one of the Bruins’ most lopsided losses of the season, a thud of an ending to their six-game winning streak.
The night went sideways in the first period when the Bruins’ penalty issues reared their ugly head against an opponent they couldn’t afford to put on the man advantage. The NHL’s second-ranked power play was one of the only weapons the Stars still had working for them. Not giving them opportunities to use it had to be a point of emphasis for the Bruins.
Instead, Boston gave Dallas three power plays in the first period alone. Sure enough, the Stars scored on two of them, and the rout was on. The Bruins may not have been happy with a call or two, but all three penalties were avoidable.
David Pastrnak took the first just 3:22 into the game, tripping Matt Duchene off a neutral-zone faceoff. Duchene, a wily veteran, seemed to make a concerted effort to skate right over Pastrnak’s stick. Nonetheless, Pastrnak’s stick was in a position to trip him, and Pastrnak did not move it. The Bruins managed to kill that penalty, at least.
The second penalty was an interference by Elias Lindholm on Esa Lindell. Lindell definitely sold it, and could have been called for embellishment. But again, Lindholm did skate right into him and put himself in a bad spot to get called. The Bruins did not kill this penalty, instead getting split open by multiple seam passes before Wyatt Johnston ended up with an empty-net finish.
The third penalty was a clear crosscheck by Nikita Zadorov that came less than two minutes after Johnston’s goal. The Bruins’ penalty kill again got shredded by the Stars’ crisp passing, with Mavrik Bourque ending up with the near-empty net this time. Jeremy Swayman actually made an incredible diving stick save on the first shot, but Bourque put in the rebound with just 13 seconds left in the period.
The Bruins had done a much better job staying out of the box during their six-game winning streak, as they gave opponents two or fewer power plays in five of those wins. That trend did not continue Tuesday, though.
"We wanted to play 5-on-5. Exactly what we talked about: Not taking penalties against a really good power play," Bruins coach Marco Sturm told NESN. "And that cost us, pretty much right away, the game, I thought."
The Bruins looked like a deflated, lifeless team from the second goal on. They got completely dominated in the second period, with the Stars outshooting them 17-5 and scoring two more goals to push their lead to 4-0.
The pile-on continued in the third with Jason Robertson scoring two early goals to make it 6-0. Sturm pulled Swayman after the sixth goal, bringing an end to the sixth game this season in which Swayman has allowed six or more goals. Swayman certainly wasn’t at fault early in this game, and even made a couple big saves that prevented things from getting out of hand earlier, but eventually his performance began to match that of his teammates.
If there was any silver lining for the Bruins, it was that Morgan Geekie ended his goal-scoring drought in the third period with his first goal in 13 games. That also spared the Bruins from getting shut out for the first time this season. Fraser Minten added a second garbage-time goal for Boston.
Sturm found another positive: A wake-up call regarding what it takes to beat a perennial playoff team.
"The positive is actually that we got pounded today," Sturm told NESN. "That's a positive because it shows me, and hopefully everyone, that they were willing -- you can tell these guys play in the playoffs every year. They play that grinding game. ... We were not willing to play that grinding game with them, and that was the difference. I think that's something we have to learn if we want to be like the Dallas Stars and be in the playoffs every year. We gotta be willing to grind every night and every period, from the top players down."
The vibes had been high for the Bruins on this “siblings trip” – with players’ brothers and sisters traveling with the team to Chicago and Dallas – but Tuesday night made for a bummer of a finish.
The Bruins now return home for a pair of games that won’t be easy, as they host the Vegas Golden Knights – fresh off their big trade for Rasmus Andersson – on Thursday followed by the rival Montreal Canadiens on Saturday.