The Bruins are their own Lucy pulling away the football
After Tuesday's comeback win over the Blues, Bruins goalie Jeremy Swayman said it would be "a game that we remember moving forward, and definitely going to catapult us in the right direction." Defenseman Charlie McAvoy said it was a night Boston could "really build off" and one that "could definitely spark something."
We've heard similar comments before – after an overtime win over Toronto on Oct. 26 that snapped a three-game losing streak, or when they followed up two blowout losses with back-to-back shutouts two weekends ago.
Time and again, this Bruins team so badly wants to believe that they have turned the corner. But like Charlie Brown running up to kick the football, that belief keeps getting ripped away, leaving them to fly into the air and fall flat on their back. In their case, however, it is not Lucy or any other outside force tricking them. The Bruins only have themselves to blame.
Case in point: Thursday's 7-2 loss to the Stars in Dallas. This was the worst possible way to follow up Tuesday's brief emotional high. It wasn't a must-win game. The Stars are a very good team. But it was a must-play-well game. The Bruins at least needed to keep up some good habits.
They couldn't even do that. After an intense first period, they completely no-showed in the second, giving up three straight goals while getting outshot 15-6 as the Stars buried them in a 5-1 hole that they would never come close to climbing out of.
The mistakes that led to those Dallas goals were self-inflicted and familiar. A lack of focus and lack of intensity reared its ugly head once again. It started just 1:09 into the game. McAvoy lost a battle. Mark Kastelic sagged too deep in coverage. Swayman got beat short-side by Matt Duchene.
The Stars' second goal came on an undeserved penalty shot. The Bruins may have felt they had been done dirty by the refs in the first thanks to that call combined with a bad hit from behind by Jamie Benn on Brandon Carlo that was somehow reduced from a five-minute major to a two-minute minor. Carlo left the game for the rest of the period, but was able to return.
But that's not where the game got away from the Bruins. They actually cut the lead to 2-1 late in the first with a goal from Charlie Coyle and were in decent shape heading to the second. The refs didn't pull the football away; the Bruins would do that themselves over the next 40 minutes.
Prior to the Stars' third goal, Johnny Beecher committed an unnecessary icing. Then Mason Lohrei turned the puck over as he tried to start a breakout. Then the Bruins just got outworked at the net-front, allowing Logan Stankoven to pull the puck out of traffic and flip it past a down-and-out Swayman.
Less than two minutes later, a whole string of soft plays opened the door for a fourth Dallas goal. David Pastrnak gave the puck away with a soft flip to no one in the neutral zone. Nikita Zadorov missed two breakout passes. Pavel Zacha lost a battle in the neutral zone. And then Swayman got beat over the arm by a one-hand chip shot from Oskar Back.
A few minutes later, it was 5-1. The "top" line of Pastrnak, Zacha and Morgan Geekie once again looked lost, blowing their backchecking assignments and getting caught puck-watching as Evgenii Dadonov strolled in behind them and beat Swayman with another short-side shot.
"It was a lack of execution on our part," Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said of the second-period meltdown during his postgame interview on NESN. "We have a puck behind the trap, we should rim that puck and we should be out of our zone, but we don't do that. We don't gain the red line, get an icing, and then they capitalize off the faceoff. And then it was just a lack of a couple executions on the backcheck."
Montgomery's job security is sure to once again be called into question after another dud. Putting the Bruins' maddening inconsistency squarely on him wouldn't be fair, but wondering if he's out of ideas to fix it is. The longer this team remains stuck in mud, the more likely a shakeup becomes.
Cole Koepke and Trent Frederic both failed to clear the zone on goal No. 6, while Carlo and Lohrei failed to tie up goal-scorer Roope Hintz in front. Carlo and Zacha decided not to take the body on the final goal, and Pastrnak and Geekie were late on the backcheck again. Not that any of it mattered by that point.
Swayman's role in all this can't be ignored. He gave up a career-high seven goals, six of them at 5-on-5. Three or four of them were stoppable shots. Swayman is now 5-6-2 on the season with an .888 save percentage, which ranks 41st out of 55 goalies who have played at least five games this season. He is not getting enough help in front of him, and he is not the Bruins' biggest problem – true – but he has also not been anything close to what he was last year or what he is expected to be after signing a $66 million contract.
As he usually does, Swayman tried to maintain a positive outlook after the game.
"It's getting myself in good position on the first shot and trusting my abilities on the second shot, and I didn't do that tonight. I've got to fix that, and I'm excited to," Swayman said. "We're gonna make sure this is a building block for us, not a step back, and that's on us to do so."
That's a nice sentiment, but the reality is that this was a step back, a big one in a season already full of them. It's certainly not a building block. The Bruins can't seem to find those anywhere this season. Every time they think they've found one, they pull it away from themselves the very next game.
Good grief.
