A week ago, the Boston Bruins beat the Washington Capitals, 4-1, in what may have been their most impressive win of the season. They couldn’t make it two in a row over the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed, though.
The Bruins closed out 2024 on Tuesday with a 3-1 loss in Washington in a New Year’s Eve matinee game. Justin Brazeau gave Boston a 1-0 lead just 1:21 into the game, but the Capitals answered with two goals later in the first period and then locked it down defensively before adding a late empty-netter.
The Bruins will now open up 2025 on Thursday night at Madison Square Garden against the walking disaster that is the New York Rangers.
Here are three takeaways from Tuesday’s loss:
1. They played well
The Bruins have had more than their fair share of ugly losses to good teams this season. This was not one of them. For the most part, this was a tight-checking, pretty evenly-played game against one of the best teams in the NHL.
The Bruins clearly did not get Washington’s best effort last week, but the Capitals looked more like themselves Tuesday, and they had Alex Ovechkin back. And the Bruins were right there going toe-to-toe with them.
At 5-on-5, in fact, they were the better team. They out-attempted the Capitals 70-47 at 5-on-5 and had an expected goals share of 63.6%. Their 70 shot attempts were their second-most all season, and their 3.36 expected goals at 5-on-5 were a season high.
The Capitals needed to put on a shot-blocking clinic to preserve their lead, which they did with a whopping 28 blocks. The Bruins just couldn’t find a way to work through or around Washington’s all-hands-on-deck defense, which we’ll get to more in section three. The effort, at least at 5-on-5, was there, though.
“I thought we had some opportunities to even the score, especially in the third period,” interim head coach Joe Sacco told NESN. “I thought we had a really good first period. We came out ready to play. And then all of a sudden, we’re behind 2-1. … I still really liked our game at that point. Second period, I thought they played better. We got away from our game in the second period. We started to play East-West. Third period, I liked our push. We just weren’t able to capitalize.”
2. New power-play units, same power-play struggles
It’s getting redundant writing this all the time, but the Bruins’ biggest problem Tuesday was, once again, their special teams. They went 0-for-2 on the power play, while the Capitals went 1-for-2. Ultimately, that was the difference in the game.
It’s not just the numbers you see in the box score, though. It’s how bad the Bruins’ power play looks, and how much it just completely sucks the life out of this team at crucial moments in the game.
Take Boston’s second power play Tuesday, which came late in the second period. It’s a one-goal game. The Bruins have a chance to tie the game just before the second intermission, or at least create some momentum they can carry into the third.
Instead, it was an abject disaster. Brazeau clumsily fumbled the puck away on one zone entry. An oblivious Pavel Zacha got his pocket picked while trying to nonchalantly glide into the zone on another. They got pinned in their own zone for part of it, unable to even win the puck back from Washington’s penalty-killers. The Bruins landed zero shots on goal during the two minutes, while the shorthanded Capitals got two.
Sacco switched up the two power-play units over the weekend and kept those changes in place Tuesday, with David Pastrnak on one unit, and Brad Marchand and Charlie McAvoy on another. But it hasn’t helped. The new units look just as lifeless and disoriented as the old ones.
This feels like a problem that goes beyond personnel and X’s-and-O’s at this point. The Bruins almost look defeated before the power play even begins, like they have absolutely no confidence that this time they’re going to break through.
Turning this thing around has obviously proven to be easier said than done. What's next? More personnel changes? A different approach from the coaches, or maybe even bringing in a power-play specialist from outside the organization? (The Bruins do still have an opening on staff post-coaching change.) More willingness to just fire shots to the net from anywhere? All of the above?
“We’re trying to compete with each other. We gotta be good for the team,” McAvoy said of the power play. “I don’t care who’s out there. Whatever five is out there, we gotta help. We gotta get shots. We gotta get chances. We gotta make it where, after the power play’s over, score or don’t score, that we can take some momentum from it.”
3. This is the kind of game that exposes Bruins’ lack of offensive creators
As we’ve covered, the Bruins played well at 5-on-5. They had zone time. They attempted a lot of shots. But they also had a lot of shots blocked and ultimately scored just one goal.
The Bruins’ offense is largely a meat-and-potatoes operation right now. Get the puck deep, win a battle, work it low-to-high, and then throw it to the net with a couple bodies in front in hopes of getting a deflection or rebound.
It’s not a bad plan at all. In fact, it’s exactly the kind of blue-collar identity you want to have. But when you run into a good defensive team that locks in the way the Capitals did Tuesday and doesn’t allow shots from the outside to get through, the best teams find different ways to attack.
Right now, the Bruins don’t really have any other way to attack, because they don’t really have enough offensive creators who can unlock a stingy defense. David Pastrnak is one, and he did have a game-high 10 shot attempts and five shots on goal Tuesday. Brad Marchand is another, especially with the way his play has picked up over the last month.
After that, though? There’s really just not another dynamic top-six forward that the Bruins can count on to consistently create chances out of structure. We all pretty much knew that was the case even before the season. Almost halfway through the regular season, it remains the case. The Bruins rank 27th in goals per game for a reason.
Maybe Matt Poitras or Fabian Lysell develop into that kind of offensive gamebreaker at some point, but expecting it from them this season is asking too much. If they’re going to add one this year – and they probably need to if they’re going to do anything in the spring – it’s going to have to be via trade.