The Bruins tried their best in the aftermath of their 7-2 rout of the St. Louis Blues in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final on Saturday, and on the off day before Monday's Game 4, to postpone the Duck Boat parade plans by stressing that they needed to be better despite the lopsided nature of their victory.
David Krejci, Charlie Coyle, Brad Marchand … each one paraded in front of the media to point out that the Bruins scored four of their goals on the power play and one into an empty net in Game 3. They would need to improve to succeed in Game 4.
"We kind of backed off after we got up by a few goals. So we can be better than what we were," Marchand said Saturday.
Instead of heeding their own words, the Bruins backed off for nearly 60 minutes in a 4-2 loss. The series is now tied 2-2 heading for Game 5 in Boston on Thursday.
It took just 43 seconds for Ryan O'Reilly to catch the Bruins flat-footed and score the first of his two goals to give St. Louis a 1-0 lead. From there the Bruins twice overcame one-goal deficits to tie the score before O'Reilly's second goal was the game-winner in a 4-2 Blues victory at 10:38 of the third period.
"They were more desperate than us," Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask told the media in St. Louis after his 34 saves prevented the Bruins from matching their five-goal win with a five-goal loss one game later.
The Bruins had to be prepared for what the Blues were going to bring to Game 4. They'd have to have been living at the top of The Gateway Arch with no access to the internet or television to miss what Blues coach Craig Berube vaguely said about the officiating on Sunday and how that would lead to more lenient officiating in Game 4. The Bruins had to know that Vince Dunn was returning from injury to improve St. Louis' puck-moving from the back end, and that Zach Sanford, a rare bright spot for the Blues in Game 3, was going to give O'Reilly a more active left wing.
Yet the Bruins played as though it was January and this was a regular-season non-conference game that could be won with a disengaged performance. Instead of upping their pace to counter the Blues' aggression, instead of moving the puck quicker and ducking the hits the way they did in Game 3, the Bruins more often than not were skating ducks, out in the open to get rolled over time and again.
O'Reilly's new line with Sanford and David Perron reduced David Krejci's line to an invisible trio, making one wonder if the Bruins can beat David Backes' old team with Backes still in the lineup. Patrice Bergeron's line might be known in some parts of this state and Canada as The Perfection Line, but they were as bad as that nickname is dumb in getting held in check by the Blues' fourth line plus the defense pair of Jay Bouwmeester and Colton Parayko. Brad Marchand didn't land a shot on net and Bergeron and David Pastrnak combined for four even-strength shots, as they were given no room to operate on the cycle and were often worn down because they were hemmed in their own end.
Coyle's line created the Bruins' lone even-strength goal but by the third period Danton Heinen was making soft plays to the middle of the ice that wouldn't cut it in a Mite game, and he took a foolish tripping penalty. It's difficult to bang on the fourth line, which has carried the Bruins to this point, but Sean Kuraly & Co., were dominated by the Blues' first line. Back home for Game 5, Cassidy's going to have to rethink that matchup, but he might have no choice to stick with it if Bergeron's line doesn't figure things out 5-on-5.
Just to prove they did not take their own words to heart, the Bruins forwards were as bad in Boston's end as in the other two zones. They didn't run interference on the forecheckers and didn't have their forwards in the right spots to take heat off the defensemen.
With no plays to make, the Bruins' defensemen – of which there were five after Zdeno Chara left the game with a facial injury early in the second period – were taking too much contact and were forced to just throw the puck into the neutral zone and pray too often. Lo and behold, one such play landed on Blues defenseman Carl Gunnarsson's stick. A quick cross-ice pass to his defense partner Alex Pietrangelo, a zone entry and toe drag to the high slot for a perfectly placed shot that Rask had to blocker away, and a battle won for a rebound later put the Bruins behind for the last time on O'Reilly's goal.
"[We] had times where we responded well to that," Backes said about the Blues' constant pushes, "and times where we're slapping the puck around a little bit more."
The ultimate slap fest that epitomized the Bruins' poor effort came after the first of Boston's two hapless power plays in Game 4 (they had one 5-on-4 shot on net during the four minutes) expired with 10:31 elapsed in the third period.
The next 3:22 stretch was played almost exclusively in the Boston end until Connor Clifton ended his personal shift of 3:06 by taking a penalty for an illegal check to the head. Including carryover time from when they were on the ice during the Boston power play, Charlie McAvoy logged 2:33, Marcus Johansson skated for 2:08 and Charlie Coyle won the booby prize for taking a shift of 3:19.
The Blues outshot Boston 5-1 and outhit the Bruins 4-3 during the embarrassing stretch of hockey when their physical limitations were understandable because of their exhaustion, but their mental failures to not just ice the puck when they had a couple chances to do so, were inexcusable.
The Bruins killed the ensuing power play. But it's shifts like that that take a lot out of a team, especially a team that clearly wasn't prepared to empty the tank against a desperate team in the first place.
For all their adversity in Game 4, the Bruins were even with the Blues in the third period and could've stolen a win on the road. Now they're going to go at least six in this series and could be missing two top-six defensemen for the next one.
The Bruins let this series go longer than necessary and could find themselves silenced and watching a Cup celebration if they don't turn their words about improvement into actions soon.
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