Bruins can't afford to do what they did Saturday in Ottawa
The Boston Bruins can't afford to do what they did Saturday, not with the Eastern Conference playoff bubble so tightly packed, and not with the team president already acknowledging that retooling could be an option if this next month and a half before the trade deadline doesn't go well.
What the Bruins did Saturday was choke away a two-goal lead late in the third period and lose to the Ottawa Senators, 6-5, in a shootout. Instead of moving into seventh place in the Eastern Conference and gaining three points of separation over Ottawa, the Bruins allowed the Senators to leapfrog them and dropped to ninth in the conference, sliding outside the top eight for the first time in two months.
How it happened was inexcusable. The Bruins led 5-3 with less than four minutes left in regulation thanks to what should have been an insurance marker a few minutes earlier from Vinni Lettieri, his first goal as a Bruin.
Once the Senators pulled goalie Leevi Merilainen for the extra attacker, though, the Bruins didn't make enough plays to close out the win. Elias Lindholm gave the puck away behind his own net seconds before Nick Jensen cut it to 5-4 with 3:13 to go. Not being able to clear the zone when you have the puck on your stick is just a killer in those late-game situations, a lesson the Bruins would learn again a few minutes later.
It was one error after another leading up to the tying goal. The Bruins won a defensive-zone faceoff, but couldn't get it out, with Nikita Zadorov and Brad Marchand seemingly not on the same page on a rim around the boards that led to a tie-up and keep-in. Then Zadorov got the puck again, and while he did clear the zone, he didn't get it all the way down, with his wrister up the middle of the ice knocked down in the neutral zone.
Next came a Bruins 3-on-2 against an empty net – surely a golden opportunity for a sixth goal to seal the win. Instead, Charlie Coyle shot the puck right into one of the two Senators who was back defending, instead of either carrying the puck in deeper or making a pass. All that amounted to was a turnover and a chance for Ottawa to turn right back up ice.
When the Senators flipped the puck back into the Bruins' zone, Jeremy Swayman gloved it down and dropped it to his stick. Instead of making a safe play to just clear the zone, he decided to take a shot at the empty net himself and fire it up the middle of the ice. The ill-advised attempt, one that would've been OK in a two-goal game but not a one-goal game, didn't even make it out of the zone, with the Senators knocking it down inside the blue line and going right back on the attack.
From there, the Bruins were scrambling and tired, and eventually they broke. Claude Giroux set up Josh Norris in the slot for the tying goal with 12 seconds remaining, with Coyle leaving the passing lane open with some poor stick position and a seemingly exhausted Marchand too slow to close on Norris from the backside – a missed coverage that appears to have led to an overtime benching for Marchand, with interim head coach Joe Sacco saying it was a coach's decision for the captain to not play 3-on-3.
"I just think we didn't execute well enough under their pressure when they had six on the five," Sacco said. "...We just have to be better defending that lead when it's [6-on-5]. I don't know really what else to say. We can't give up slot chances like that."
Neither team scored in overtime, and the Bruins didn't score in the shootout either. Tim Stutzle scored the lone goal there, giving the Senators the all-important extra point.
That was the icing on the misery cake for the Bruins. Ottawa shouldn't have gotten any points Saturday, never mind two. Boston started the game poorly, getting caved in early and falling into a 2-0 hole just 7:35 into the game, and ended it worse. There was a lot of good in between as they turned a two-goal deficit into a two-goal lead – including multi-point games from David Pastrnak, Pavel Zacha, Morgan Geekie and Mason Lohrei – but that all feels hollow now given the way the day ended.
A third straight big win over a division rival could have been something real for the Bruins to build on. Instead, the bad taste left by Saturday's loss is the kind of thing that makes you think this team is moving ever closer to that "retool" option Cam Neely discussed this week.
The Bruins will try to bounce back against the San Jose Sharks in a Monday matinee game at TD Garden before gearing up for a tough four-day stretch later in the week when they face the New Jersey Devils on Wednesday, the Senators again on Thursday, and the Colorado Avalanche on Saturday.
