Everyone knew life without Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron would be difficult. It's possible that even if the whole team stepped up and played well Thursday night, the Bruins would have simply not been good enough to beat Carolina, a team with the second-best record in the NHL.
None of that is an excuse for how things actually played out Thursday, though. For the second time in a month, the Bruins basically no-showed against the Hurricanes, this time losing 6-0. Not only was there a dearth of players stepping up, but some of Boston's most important players just straight-up failed an important test.
Charlie McAvoy played well and brought some needed energy, passion and physicality. Jack Studnicka looked pretty good in his first NHL game since Dec. 16 and helped create a couple of the Bruins' few good offensive chances. After that, you would be hard-pressed to find positives.
Up front, the biggest disappointment was the Taylor Hall-Erik Haula-David Pastrnak line. What has been a very good second line for the Bruins became the de facto first line with Marchand and Bergeron out. The Bruins need them to lead the way in creating offense until those two return, but on Thursday they did anything but.
Until late in the second period, the three of them had combined for zero shot attempts at five-on-five. Forget goals, scoring chances or even shots on goal. Not a single attempt! Through nearly 40 minutes of hockey!
They had a difficult matchup for sure, as they frequently lined up against Carolina's Nino Niederreiter-Jordan Staal-Jesper Fast line, one of the better shutdown lines in the NHL. But the Bruins need that line to still be able to create chances against tough opposition. You know what they'll face in the playoffs? Tough opposition.
In the third period, Cassidy moved Haula off that line and put Studnicka between Hall and Pastrnak. He said after the game that the switch wasn't just about Haula and that he would go back to having Haula there on Saturday. But it was also the second time in the last couple weeks that Cassidy has demoted Haula, which will only increase questions about whether he's really the long-term answer there.
The Bruins' back end was just as bad. There were plenty of mistakes to go around, but a couple of the worst belonged to Brandon Carlo. Two of Carolina's goals came right after failed clearances from Carlo.
On one, he had a weak flip from in front of the net that went right to Andrei Svechnikov, who proceeded to rip a shot past Linus Ullmark. On the other, while killing a penalty, he couldn't settle or make contact with a bouncing puck in the slot, allowing the Hurricanes to maintain possession instead of being able to clear it down the ice.
Unfortunately, this has been an ongoing theme for Carlo this season. Far too often, he has committed these kinds of turnovers in dangerous areas and had them end up in the back of the Bruins' net. You keep waiting for him to clean it up, because we've seen him play cleaner hockey in the past, but it's mid-February now. Carlo has stepped up as more of a leader, as evidence by how often he's worn an alternate captain's 'A,' but the Bruins need him to also step up his play.
In goal, Linus Ullmark was far from the biggest problem Thursday night, but he wasn't exactly part of the solution either. He wasn't able to bail out his teammates enough, and he gave up a juicy rebound off a long shot on Carolina's third goal.
Combined with a rough outing from Jeremy Swayman on Tuesday against Pittsburgh, this week has served as a reminder that there is still plenty of room for improvement with this goalie tandem, especially with no more Tuukka Rask fallback plan.
Beating a good team like the Hurricanes was always going to be a struggle with Marchand and Bergeron out. But you at least expect the effort to be there. You at least expect some key guys to step up and play well. On Thursday, that didn't happen.
"These are hard games against Carolina," Cassidy said. "Guys are gonna have to realize that if you want to win in this league, you have to be prepared to play the hard games and play the right way. It doesn't matter who's in the lineup from night to night. Bergy shouldn't change another player's approach, how he's gonna play the game."
