Bruce Cassidy summed it up best following Boston’s 5-0 drubbing at the hands of the Florida Panthers Tuesday — the third loss in the last four outings for a shorthanded club finally starting to feel the effects of some momentous vacancies sprinkled across its roster.
“Tonight, it was men against boys at times, it looked like,” Cassidy said. “Some of our younger players had their hands full. … We’ve got to find a solution.”
The downturn most Bruins fans were expecting almost immediately following injuries to Patrice Bergeron, Charlie McAvoy, Zdeno Chara and many more have finally come to fruition — and at the worst possible time.
After capturing points in six of seven games following Chara’s injury against the Avalanche back on Nov. 14, the bottom has finally fallen out on a patchwork B’s roster — with Boston getting outscored by a 14-6 margin in its last four outings.
What were the pillars of this Bruins team in wake of so many injuries — strong team defense, stout goaltending, effective special teams — largely eroded on Tuesday night, with 39 saves by Jaroslav Halak standing in the way of an even more heinous final score.
“What we’ve done over the past four, five weeks as we’ve got depleted on the blue line is that we’ve stayed in games, played good team defense, gotten goaltending, which we got for the most part tonight,” Cassidy said. “Our power play has picked us up when we needed it and some timely scoring.”
Defensive lapses are to be expected when you still have players like Connor Clifton and Jeremy Lauzon logging heavy minutes night in and night out, but it was NHL regulars like Torey Krug or green forwards such as Ryan Donato that were the culprits on Tuesday.
Both skaters caught flat footed on numerous sequences — including a rough stretch in which Panthers defenseman Michael Matheson evaded both players along the boards before beating Halak off the (largely) unopposed rush.
As a whole, Boston has managed to collect points at a steady pace thanks to its goaltending and overall defensive structure — with Boston entering Tuesday’s tilt with the fewest goals allowed at 64 on the year through 26 games.
“Our team defense wasn’t good enough,” Cassidy said. “Poor gaps all night. Didn’t move the puck on the back end nearly crisp enough,. And that’s going to happen sometimes. We do have some guys learning their way, but you can’t use that as an excuse.”
The optics didn’t look good as Tuesday’s game progressed, with Cassidy and Boston’s staff bumping up
David Krejci
the top line alongside
Brad Marchand
and
David Pastrnak
in a desperate attempt to roll out at least one effective forward line.
The results left much to be desired, to say the least.
Colby Cave
, playing in just his sixth game this season — most of which have been in a top-six role — was largely rudderless on Boston’s second line with Donato and
Jake DeBrusk.
It’s a troubling sign of the times in which Cave, with zero goals and nine total games under his belt, is being tasked with turning around Boston’s woes at center.
Joakim Nordstrom,
playing out of position as third-line center following a lackluster showing from
Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson
at the pivot, didn’t fare much better. During close to 10 minutes of 5v5 TOI alongside
Danton Heinen
and
Noel Acciari,
Nordstrom’s line was outshot by a 9-4 margin on Tuesday — furthering the issues for a line that has been shuffled at a nearly constant rate so far this season.
Of the 12 players in Boston’s forward corps on Tuesday, only six have managed to score at least two goals in 5v5 play all season long.
Danton Heinen
, Krejci and
Sean Kuraly
have only managed to light the lamp once apiece during 5v5, while
Noel
Acciari,
thrust into a third-line role given Boston’s jumbled up roster, has zero 5v5 goals over a span of 235:21.
Under the right circumstances — with Bergeron and Chara back in the fold — this current stretch could have been a time to gain ground in the division, with Boston in the midst of a five-game run exclusively against Atlantic foes, highlighted by tilts against Tampa and Toronto on Thursday and Saturday.
So here it is. Whether it be dreading the lack of established talent added during the offseason or the impact brought on by a myriad of injuries, these are the fears of many a Bruins fan realized after months of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And it’s not pretty.
