MONTREAL – “Play spoiler against them.”
That was Bruins interim head coach Joe Sacco’s mission statement for Thursday’s trip to Montreal. It’s all this Boston team can try to do right now.
In one of the great ironies of this season, the Canadiens finally look ready to have a rivalry again. They’ve been down for the better part of the past decade, save for their out-of-nowhere COVID season run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2021 (a season in which they never played the Bruins thanks to the league’s temporary realignment).
Now, however, the Habs are making a playoff push. They’re currently clinging to the final wild card spot in the Eastern Conference, and they just notched back-to-back wins over the defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers, followed by Thursday’s 4-1 win over the Bruins. The Bell Centre was electric Thursday, and there was a buzz on the streets around it before the game.
The Bruins have gone in the opposite direction. Now they’re the ones with nothing to play for in April. Now they’re the ones trying to find motivation in things like “playing spoiler” against their historic archrival – an archrival that much of this roster has little to no history against in meaningful games.
They tried Thursday, at least for a little while. There was some passion and physicality. Cole Koepke fought Kaiden Guhle in response to a hit Guhle threw on Fabian Lysell that the Bruins didn’t like. Nikita Zadorov and Jakub Lauko were mixing it up throughout the night. Jeremy Swayman made some terrific saves. The B’s did play a pretty good road first period.
But then the talent disparity showed up in the second period – and yes, the Canadiens are now clearly a more talented team than these Bruins as currently constituted. After a scoreless first, Montreal took a 2-0 lead in the second thanks to goals from Christian Dvorak and Cole Caufield, all while outshooting the Bruins 17-2 in the frame. It was just the latest disastrously lopsided period for the B’s, one in which they could hardly get out of their own zone.
“Everything,” Zadorov said after the game when asked what went wrong in the second. “We didn’t win any battles. Couldn’t leave our zone. We got one shot, two shots on net, in the last five minutes of the period.”
The Canadiens added a third goal early in the third period, with Brendan Gallagher capitalizing on a brutal turnover by Casey Mittelstadt, and that was ballgame. A late tally from Elias Lindholm wasn’t nearly enough to launch a comeback.
With the loss, the Bruins continued to make history for all the wrong reasons. It was their 10th straight loss, tied for the second-longest losing streak in franchise history. Only the 1924-25 team, in the very first season in franchise history, had one longer, and that one was 11 games. It was also the Bruins’ 12th straight game with 25 or fewer shots, which is tied for the second-longest streak by any team since the NHL started recording shots in 1959-60. Only the 1998-99 Vancouver Canucks had a longer such streak, at 15 games.
Some of them are at a loss for words.
“I don’t know,” Zadorov said when asked where they have to start in order to get out of this.
Lindholm said they have no choice but to just show up every day and work.
“I mean, this is our job,” Lindholm said. “We’re getting paid a lot of money to do this. There’s people out there that are struggling, and we’re getting paid millions to play hockey. So no, it shouldn’t be hard to find some sort of motivation.”
These two rival franchises didn’t even see each other as they reversed roles. The last time they played was in the Bruins’ Centennial Game at TD Garden on Dec. 1. While the Bruins weren’t playing great hockey at that time – and had already fired Jim Montgomery – they still clearly had the upper hand on the Habs. Charlie McAvoy and Charlie Coyle each scored to lead Boston to an emotional 6-3 win, one that felt like a potential turning point.
We all know now that it wasn’t, of course. The Bruins playing on April 3 barely resemble the team that played on Dec. 1, just four months ago. McAvoy is injured. Coyle got traded, as did Brad Marchand, Brandon Carlo, Trent Frederic and Justin Brazeau.
The Canadiens dropped to 8-13-3 with that loss on Dec. 1. They still did not look like a team that was even close to being ready to challenge for a playoff spot. Their push began later that month, and they’ve now gone 25-14-6 since Dec. 17, good for the 10th-best record in the NHL in that time. The Bruins, by the way, are third-worst since then at 14-24-6.
It’s a shame. It’s a shame there was finally a late-season Bruins-Canadiens game that meant something for Montreal, only to have it mean nothing for Boston. It’s a shame the Bruins hadn’t even been to Montreal this season before Thursday (thanks, NHL schedule-makers). It’s a shame they only played three times this year.
It’s a shame that, despite a couple scrums Thursday, the B’s-Habs rivalry still feels relatively dormant, and that it’s now the Bruins to blame for that.