It was going to happen eventually. As exciting as it was to watch the Bruins keep mounting third-period comebacks, and as encouraging as it was for the Bruins to learn they could do that, everyone knew that falling behind all the time wasn't a recipe for continued success.
It finally caught up to the Bruins with a wakeup call Saturday night in their 4-2 loss to the Islanders -- just their second regulation loss of the season, both of which have come against the Islanders.
There were plenty of reasons to suspect it would be a tough third period. The Bruins were playing the second night of a back-to-back and their third game in four nights, and they looked like it for most of the night.
They were also playing the team that has allowed the fewest third-period goals this season, and one that had already shut them down earlier this season.
So with the game tied 2-2 after two, it seemed like the Bruins' best hope would be to shut down the Islanders and find a way to break through just once. Instead, they gave up a power-play goal early in the period and a shorthanded goal later, and it was the Islanders who did the shutting down.
In other games in which the Bruins had more energy and were playing teams that weren't as strong defensively, they were able to overcome any mistakes they made by taking over offensively.
On Saturday, they had no chance. The combination of sloppy breakouts, turnovers and failed clears all leading to goals -- not to mention a soft goal allowed by Tuukka Rask - was too much to overcome in this situation, against this team.
While it might be tempting to write off this loss because of the tough scheduling, the Bruins shouldn't get a total free pass. The schedule is going to be tough all year and probably in the playoffs too. That's just the way it works in a condensed season. You're going to have to win some back-to-backs at some point.
Similarly, the Islanders could be a thorn in the Bruins' side all season and possibly in the playoffs too. The Bruins might be able to come back against lesser defensive teams like the Capitals, Flyers and Penguins, but the Islanders are the real deal defensively, and they're the real deal in goal with Semyon Varlamov. They can make a one-goal lead stand up, so mistakes become magnified.
"At the end of the day, we know that we can still win some of those games," said Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy. "I just don't know that you want to go into games thinking that every night, because it does catch up with you at playoff time when things get tighter. And I think you can already see teams tightening up a little bit."
In addition to the defensive mistakes the Bruins made Saturday night, there's another problem they'll need to fix if they're going to regularly win these tighter-checking games and not just the wide-open ones. And it's one that isn't new: secondary scoring.
Both of the Bruins' goals Saturday night came from their top line, which is great for that trio. But they need more from the other three lines, especially at five-on-five. After Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron and David Pastrnak, the rest of the Bruins' forward corps has now scored 11 even-strength goals combined in 14 games.
"Games are tighter. It's closer to playoff hockey," Cassidy said. "And some guys have to realize it to chip in offensively, the secondary scoring. We've been through it. Some of the guys in this room have been through it, what it takes to score. You're not going to get those typically wide-open games you might get early in the season. At least I haven't seen it yet. I'm not talking about Trent Frederic, where this is his first go-round, he's just learning.
"Some guys that have been here, young, old, some of the guys in between, that it's hard to score, and what it takes. It requires getting inside ice. It requires a shot mentality, recovering a puck while a team's scrambling to recover -- things like that that I think some of our offensive guys have not bought into yet, at least not enough. So we'll keep harping away on it."
The Bruins are still in a great spot. They still have a four-point lead in the division and the third-best record in the NHL. Saturday was just their second loss in regulation.
But they're not perfect, and they couldn't keep depending on third-period offensive outbursts. So consider Saturday a wakeup call, and one they now have a few days to learn from before their next game on Thursday.
