If the Bruins end up missing the playoffs, Sunday will be one of those games that haunt them well into the summer.
For 33 minutes, they looked like they were well on their way to finally ending their road losing streak. Two goals from Pavel Zacha and another from David Pastrnak put Boston up 3-0 on a Pittsburgh Penguins team that was playing without Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.
Unfortunately for the Bruins, they completely choked in the second half of the game and wound up losing 5-4 in overtime, resulting in a three-point swing against one of the teams they're battling with for a playoff spot.
The problems started where so many of the Bruins' problems this season have started, with penalty trouble. A minute after going up 3-0, Jonathan Aspirot took a tripping penalty. Twenty-two seconds after that, Hampus Lindholm slashed Erik Karlsson to hand the Penguins an extended 5-on-3 power play, which they took advantage of with an Egor Chinakhov goal.
Instead of regrouping and slamming the door shut in the third period, the Bruins looked like they were sleep-walking to start the third, making careless plays with the puck and abandoning any and all structure. The Penguins made them pay.
Connor Dewar cut it to 3-2 when he beat Aspirot to an indirect pass off the end boards, spun off Aspirot with a power move, and flung a backhander past Joonas Korpisalo, who struggled for a second straight start. No other Bruin, including D partner Nikita Zadorov, got back in time to help Aspirot or Korpisalo.
The Penguins struck again just 33 seconds later, with Aspirot victimized again. This time Aspirot got sucked too far over to one side of the ice and couldn't recover in time as Anthony Mantha raced up the middle in transition and beat Korpisalo five-hole.
Zacha completed his second hat trick of the season to put Boston back in the lead, but the Bruins seemed determined to not let him be the hero. Once again, the defense – and specifically Aspirot – broke down, with Aspirot losing track of Mantha, who poked in a leaky rebound from Korpisalo.
The Bruins shot themselves in the foot again in overtime. They won the opening faceoff, but a careless turnover from Charlie McAvoy helped set up Tommy Novak's winning goal seconds later. The refs missed a clear interference by Karlsson on Pastrnak just before the goal, but blaming the refs for this one would let the Bruins off the hook way too easily.
They did this to themselves, and dented their playoff chances in the process. They're still in a playoff spot with 76 points in 63 games, but they're just three points ahead of the Blue Jackets, who have a game in hand. There's a whole jumble of teams right around the Bruins, any of whom could be the odd man out if they slip down the stretch: the Penguins (78 points in 63 games), Islanders (77 in 64), Canadiens (78 in 62), and Red Wings (77 in 63).
The Bruins still have everything ahead of them to play for, but make no mistake: they have now slipped a bit, most notably on Sunday in Pittsburgh and on Thursday in Nashville against a bad Predators team. They've now lost seven straight road games, and they're 3-2-1 since the Olympic break.
That's not going to be good enough moving forward, especially with 11 of their final 19 games on the road. In the immediate future, though, the Bruins do get to return to the friendly confines of TD Garden this week, where they'll look to extend their 12-game home winning streak against Los Angeles and San Jose – two teams also fighting for their playoff lives out west.