The Boston Bruins’ offseason was designed with the Florida Panthers in mind. General manager Don Sweeney knew his squad needed to get bigger, stronger and more physical to beat the team that has ended their season two years in a row, so he signed and traded for bigger, stronger, more physical players. Coach Jim Montgomery knew they needed to improve their forechecking game and their net-front defense, so both were prioritized during training camp.
Opening night was the perfect opportunity for the Bruins to show that they were better equipped to deal with the Panthers. That did not happen, however. Instead, in a 6-4 loss that wasn’t nearly as close as the final score suggests, the Bruins looked like a team that was still overmatched by the Panthers and still had no answer for their agitating antics.
Yes, it was only one game. No, it doesn’t mean the Bruins’ offseason facelift was a bust. But this was about as ugly of a start as the Bruins could have had. Just about everything that could have gone wrong and gotten exposed by the Panthers did.
The Panthers rode the high of their pregame banner-raising ceremony to a dominant start, with the Bruins getting pinned in their own zone one shift after another and unable to generate anything in the way of offense. By the 7:31 mark of the first, the Panthers already had a 2-0 lead and were outshooting the Bruins 12-1.
It looked an awful lot like last season’s second-round playoff series, when slow starts and long stretches without shots killed the Bruins. The goals looked familiar, too. On both of those early goals, the Panthers got pucks and bodies to the net and simply won net-front battles before burying rebounds, with Sam Bennett out-muscling Brandon Carlo on the first and Eetu Luostarinen getting inside position on Trent Frederic on the second.
“We weren’t good enough in so many areas tonight. They were,” Montgomery said. “Their execution was really good. Our execution was really poor. I can’t pinpoint why we looked slow, but we looked slow the entire game.”
Not even a shorthanded goal from Pavel Zacha could give the Bruins any sustained momentum. The Panthers immediately answered with a shorthanded goal of their own when Sam Reinhart blew past Charlie McAvoy and roofed a shot past Joonas Korpisalo. A minute later, Bennett made it 4-1 with his second goal of the period, driving to the net, finding a blocked shot before Andrew Peeke, and whacking it past Korpisalo. A weak Carlo turnover in the neutral zone led to a 3-on-1 the other way and a 5-1 deficit.
Speaking of Korpisalo, he wasn’t good enough. His teammates hung him out to dry for sure, but his rebound control was poor, especially on Florida’s first two goals. A timely save on Reinhart’s shorthanded goal might have kept the Bruins in the game. It was understandable why Korpisalo got the start – because Jeremy Swayman wasn’t quite ready after just signing on Sunday – but Tuesday did nothing to alleviate concerns over Korpisalo’s bad 2023-24 season in Ottawa.
At times, the Bruins looked like a team that wasn’t sure if they wanted to play hockey or just seek out fights to settle some scores. They wound up doing neither. New Bruin Mark Kastelic did drop the gloves with old Bruin A.J. Greer in the first period, but Frederic got hit with an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty when he tried to square off with Matthew Tkachuk. Big new defenseman Nikita Zadorov was sent off for cross-checking when he went barreling into a post-whistle scrum. Another new Bruin, Max Jones, tried to inject himself into the rivalry a couple times, but just wound up taking unsportsmanlike conduct and roughing penalties instead.
Frederic accused Tkachuk (a childhood friend, by the way) of being “disrespectful to the game” afterwards, saying that Tkachuk actually challenged him to the fight, only to then back away once Frederic dropped his gloves.
“I didn’t know people did that,” Frederic said. “I think that’s a little disrespectful to the game. That’s my thoughts.”
If that is what happened, Frederic is right. Tkachuk did violate the so-called code. It’s a weasel move. But here’s the thing: that’s what the Panthers do, and the Bruins know it. Bennett sucker-punched Brad Marchand in hopes of knocking him out of the playoffs, for crying out loud.
The Panthers do cross the line. They do break unwritten rules. They also keep winning. And the Bruins keep falling into their traps. They continue to come out of these matchups shaking their heads and searching for answers.
“Our guys, every time they tried to push back, they went to the box,” Montgomery lamented.
“They’re a smart, disciplined team,” he added of the Panthers. “They know what they’re doing. Unfortunately, that part of the game, they beat us at.”
The Bruins will be a much better team this season than what they showed Tuesday night. Whether they can figure out how to match the Panthers, physically and mentally, remains to be seen. It won’t be long before they get another shot, as they host Florida Monday afternoon at TD Garden for a holiday matinee.