Bruins' road woes reach critical mass with embarrassing loss in Buffalo
Want some good news for the Boston Bruins? Their next three games, and four of their next five leading up to the 4 Nations Face-Off break, are at home, where they have gone 10-1-1 since the start of December.
The bad news is that they have developed a terrible habit of falling on their face when they get out on the road. After Tuesday night's embarrassing 7-2 loss to the Buffalo Sabres, the team with the worst record in the Eastern Conference, the Bruins are now 1-7-1 on the road since Christmas.
They don't seem to have any explanation for why their play on the road has been so much worse than at home.
"I don't know. I don't have an answer," captain Brad Marchand said when asked about it Tuesday night.
Interim head coach Joe Sacco tried to dig a little deeper when he was asked about the home-road disparity on Monday, before the Buffalo trip.
"I think the biggest thing right now is just sticking with it on the road," he said. "I feel at home, we've had a really strong mindset where if we got down a goal or two, we just stayed with it. We've had some comebacks in the third period here at home, where our guys have really dug in and were pretty determined. So, that same focus and that same mindset has to exist on the road as well if we want to be a good road team. If we get down a goal or two, can't let it get away from us. And I feel like that's happening a little bit on the road. So, we've got to make sure that we reel it back in, reset, shift our focus, whatever you want to call it, but make sure that we understand that we're still in the hockey game here, and we can't let it get away from us."
Unfortunately, none of that changed on Tuesday. Instead, this became one of the worst examples yet of the Bruins letting a game get away from them. They weren't ready to start the game on time, allowing the Sabres to get the jump on them and out-possess and out-chance them in the first period.
Yet, the Bruins did take a 1-0 lead on a nice individual play by Mason Lohrei 12:44 into the game. They did not build any momentum off it. In fact, they gave it right back less than a minute later, with a bad line change allowing Tage Thompson to walk untouched into the high slot and rip a 102.3 mph one-timer past Jeremy Swayman.
The defensive lapses began to pile up in the second period. Thompson got free for a second goal thanks to some poor rush defense, with Morgan Geekie overcommitting on the backcheck and leaving the rest of the Bruins scrambling as some quick tic-tac-toe passing created a 2-on-1 down low.
Less than two minutes later, another rush defense miscue left JJ Peterka unchallenged in the left circle to fire a shot over Swayman's glove. You'd like a save there, but you'd also like someone to step up on the shooter. Instead, Andrew Peeke had sagged off to defend the net-front, an area Nikita Zadorov was already defending. Peeke seemed to expect Matt Poitras to pick up Peterka, but Poitras was too far behind the play.
Thompson capped off his hat trick early in the third period, this time with Zadorov giving him way too much space thanks to some poor gap control as he entered the offensive zone. Instead of stepping up on Thompson, Zadorov just kept backing up until Thompson had gotten into shooting range. That said, this was another one where you'd like to get a save from Swayman.
Marchand cut the lead to 4-2 on the power play with 9:47 remaining, but any hopes the Bruins may have had for a comeback were quickly dashed. Once again, they followed up a goal with an inexcusable dud of a shift, allowing the Sabres to score just 30 seconds later. Vinni Lettieri turned the puck over at the offensive blue line, and then Lohrei and Parker Wotherspoon allowed Peterka to split them right up the middle, almost untouched, before burying his second goal of the game. Peterka would complete his own hat trick with an empty-netter.
Look, the Bruins were very shorthanded on defense Tuesday night, with a sick Brandon Carlo joining the injured Charlie McAvoy and Hampus Lindholm on the sidelines. Obviously, that hurts. But it doesn't explain the effort the Bruins put forth in Buffalo.
The poor backchecking, the bad gap control, the turnovers high in the offensive zone… those didn't happen because of who's out. Those happened because of a lack of focus and lack of execution from the guys who were in.
Maybe it's not so much a home-road problem as it is a more general inconsistency problem that just happens to look ugliest on the road. Either way, nights like Tuesday make it hard to envision this team putting together the kind of run that would convince anyone that it's worth buying before the March 7 trade deadline rather than opting for the "retool" path Cam Neely threatened.
"Obviously we're desperate right now, and we can't afford to have games like this where we're not prepared," Marchand said. "We need every point. … You need to come prepared to play, and ready to compete harder than that."
The problem is that nights like Tuesday, where the Bruins don't look desperate at all, keep happening. They had a game just like this less than a week ago in New Jersey. They bounced back at home with a pair of big wins over Ottawa and Colorado, but then they fell apart again in Buffalo.
They can't keep riding the rollercoaster. It's not a formula for long-term success, and it's not what good teams do. This is what teams stuck in the mushy middle do, and that's all the Bruins have been to this point in the season.
