McDonald: After blowing 4-1 lead to Sabres, next man up not working for Bruins

Torey Krug is an extremely smart man.

The Boston Bruins defenseman is articulate, insightful and honest. At some point soon he will wear a letter on the front of his sweater because he’s one of the leaders on the team. Whether he likes it or not, he’s front and center when the team is struggling.

When asked to describe Saturday’s horrific 5-4 overtime implosion to the Buffalo Sabres at TD Garden, it took Krug over 10 seconds to respond. Forget about a penny for his thoughts. It would have cost $1 million to get a brutally honest answer this time.

He held back a bit, but it was still tough to explain how the Bruins surrendered a 4-1 lead at home to an opponent that’s struggling to start the season, and was playing on back-to-back nights. Oh, and Buffalo also played in Vegas earlier in the week and stayed over after a 5-4 overtime loss to the Golden Knights.

“I don’t know,” Krug said after thinking about his answer. “Just let it slip away from us. We needed a big play, needed to get out of a mess and we just couldn’t do it. We hold ourselves accountable and it hurts, especially with the long layoff (four days) before the next game.”

Coach Bruce Cassidy is not in the business of making excuses. I’ll do it for him in this situation because the Bruins are without David Krejci, Tuukka Rask, Kevan Miller, Adam McQuaid and Noel Acciari due to injuries. This was the type of game when a team needed its best goalie to stop the bleeding, but unfortunately for the Bruins backup turned starter Anton Khudobin couldn’t do the job.

Even when Boston had a three-goal lead there was a sense that it could quickly disappear because Khudobin was fighting the puck all night.

“Erratic,” Cassidy said when asked to describe Khudobin’s performance. “He battles. We love that about him. He battled to the end. Certainly made his share of saves. We need to be better in front of him, but there were times that there were fires that needed to be put out that shouldn’t have been necessary. But that happens sometimes.”

Excluding Khudobin’s subpar performance, there were young mistakes made that cost the Bruins. Cassidy wouldn’t point fingers, which is a smart move when you’re dealing with a young core of players, but in the case of Brandon Carlo, he should know better than to make two crucial mistakes that contributed to the loss.

Listen, I’m not saying the implosion was all on the second-year defenseman, but he needed to have better awareness with the game on the line. Chalk it up to a learning experience. First, his interference penalty on the Sabres’ Kyle Okposo at 15:42 played a big role in Buffalo’s comeback win.

Boston had a one-goal lead when Okposo was attempting to go around Carlo at the Bruins’ blue line. A split-second hesitation by Carlo before he decided to take the body made the referee’s decision an easy one to call the penalty. Had Carlo stepped up right away, he may have gotten away with one, but he ended up in the box. His second mistake was going to the bench when the penalty expired. The Sabres had possession in the offensive zone and the Bruins couldn’t get a player on the ice in time before Buffalo’s Evan Kane scored the game-tying goal. He should have engaged in the play right out of the box as the third forward down low.

“In hindsight, it could have worked out better,” Cassidy said of Carlo’s decision to go to the bench instead of getting into the play. “He made the decision to come to the bench. We felt we could get our winger on and he’s got to make that split-second decision. They’re instructed to come out of the box and be the low forward, whether you’re a D or forward, especially if the other guys are fatigued. If you can get to the bench and get the positional player on then you make that decision. In hindsight, he should’ve went on and become our low forward. But at the end of the day, we didn’t do a good enough job. We didn’t stop in front. We didn’t clear the front. We didn’t control the rebound and get hungry on the puck and have the will to keep it out of our net. I’m not going to put it on Brandon Carlo.”

There was certainly more to this loss than just one player. It was a combination of things. The biggest factor was the team's inability to have that closer mentality. After the first period, I mentioned to another beat writer that this game could get out of hand and ugly real quick. I wasn't talking about the Bruins blowing it in the fashion they did. I actually thought it would end in a blow out for Boston.

So, now what?

The worst part is the Bruins don't play again until they host the San Jose Sharks on Thursday. That's four full days to dwell on this loss instead of getting right back out and fixing what's wrong. Getting back to the goaltending situation, I know goalies are a different breed than most pro athletes, but Khudobin showed almost zero remorse for the loss. Based on past career performances, he's fortunate to have this job and he hasn't been at his best since Rask was sidelined with a concussion.

Again, it's not entirely on the goalie, but he needed to be the team's best player in the third period and in overtime and he wasn't. There are certain games a team will reflect on at the end of the season and this will definitely be one of them, especially if the Bruins lose out on a postseason berth by a point or two.