The Bruins haven't had the best start to the unofficial second half of the season, going 1-2-1 since returning from the All-Star break. The two regulation losses – to Calgary last Tuesday and Washington on Saturday – were of the no-show, absolute stinker variety, with Boston getting booed on home ice in both.
Former Bruins player and coach Mike Milbury isn't completely hitting the panic button just yet, but during his weekly appearance on The Greg Hill Show on Thursday (listen to the full interview above), he did say that he's getting more concerned about this team and whether or not they have what it takes to make a deep playoff run.
"There's a lot of things that bother me since the break," Milbury said. "I can forgive them for the first game back against Calgary. And then they hammer their archrival for the moment, Vancouver. And then they come back, and the game that really upset me, disturbed me was the game against Washington. It was a matter of effort and emotion and passion. It had nothing to do with talent. They were completely smothered by the Capitals.
"Although they were better against Tampa Bay, there's a lot of things that have popped up. Both parts of special teams now are a concern, where once they were strengths, especially the penalty-killing. It now looks like it's a little bit porous. And the power play… 0-for-5, I guess technically 0-for-6 because they had a two-second power play at the end of overtime… they claim that they felt good about moving the puck better, but the result is not there. So, that's another issue.
"But more than anything, I just felt like there's a creeping trend of slow starts and slow finishes and some sloppy play mixed in. I felt great about them at the All-Star break, and now I'm… do you believe that they can actually go deep into the playoffs? They're starting to give you indications that might not be the case."
As Milbury alluded to, it's been a dramatic shift from the way the Bruins were playing going into the All-Star break, when they won seven of eight games and scored 4.5 goals per game in the process.
The Bruins will look to get back in the win column Thursday night when they host the Seattle Kraken. They have three games left in this seven-game homestand before they head out on a four-game road trip to Western Canada and Seattle.
For more Bruins talk, be sure to tune in to Sunday Skate with Andrew Raycroft, Scott McLaughlin and Bridgette Proulx, starting this Sunday 9-11 a.m. on WEEI 93.7 FM, WEEI.com, and the Audacy app.
