For as steamed as the Bruins were as they trudged their way back to the locker room at the end of the second period — all of the head-scratching and frustrations largely evaporated when Brad Marchand fielded questions at the conclusion of an eventual 6-4 victory over the Penguins.
“We got it done. At the end of the day, it's the regular season,” Marchand said after a five-point night. “It doesn't matter how you win, you just have to win. Obviously we're not happy with that, but we got it done."
Those sour sentiments from the middle stanza might have been long gone by the time the Bruins boarded the team bus outside of TD Garden. But the lessons learned from that stretch against a fleet-footed Pittsburgh team are going to linger for quite some time.
Through the first 25 minutes of regulation on Monday night, a B’s team looking for its sixth win in a row seemed poised to run the Penguins out of the building. At the very least, Boston managed to chase starting netminder Matt Murray, who exited the game after relinquishing three goals on Boston’s first 11 shots of the night.
For the remainder of the second, Boston landed five shots against Tristan Jarry following David Pastrnak’s goal at 4:22.
But the Penguins landed 16 during that same stretch — four of which sailed past a besieged Jaroslav Halak in what stood as the ugliest period of the season for the Bruins.
Halak was hardly at fault, with poor line changes and a leaky defense allowing the Penguins to orchestrate rush after rush against the B’s goalie. By the time John Marino slipped Pittsburgh’s fourth goal of the period past Halak with three seconds to go, the man between the pipes finally had enough — smashing his stick against the crossbar before whipping the mangled twig into the end boards.
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Pittsburgh had overcome a three-goal deficit in short order, taking a 4-3 lead through 40 minutes of regulation. And yet, as the Penguins suffocated Boston in its own zone — holding a commanding 28-9 edge in 5v5 shot attempts — Bruce Cassidy didn’t attempt to stem the turning tide with a timeout or heated exchange on the bench.
In the midst of a 2019-20 campaign that’s largely been smooth sailing for his club, Cassidy welcomed a bit of choppy water.
"I think at this point of the year, there’s a little bit of, ‘Let’s see this play out.’ We’re in pretty solid position right now; maybe we needed to be kicked in the ass a little and see how do our guys respond," Cassidy said of potentially calling a timeout. "Do they sort it out themselves? Because we do have a veteran group. We rely on the leadership group, so clearly, they did between periods."
So far this year, Boston has rarely been put on the ropes, especially in the manner that transpired on Monday night. Following the first period — in which both Jake DeBrusk and Marchand lit the lamp — the Bruins had outscored their opponents, 28-10, over their last 17 full periods of hockey.
Entering Monday's contest, Boston had held the lead in 60.42% of all of its TOI so far this season — far and away the leader among all NHL clubs.
Some of it might have been the Penguins' speed. Some of it a bit of complacency after building a 3-0 cushion. All of it formed a potent mix that allowed Pittsburgh to sock a confident Bruins club in the mouth for most of the second period.
"Even against Ottawa, we didn't have a great game, but we won," Marchand said. "It's not something we can continue to do. We can't have bad games and expect to win every night. Playing with fire a little bit. But it was a good eye-opener for us. Realizing that we're not as good as maybe we might have thought we were.
"Things were rolling smoothly and every team has an opportunity to win every night. That's just something that we just have to continue to remember. But when we focus on and play our game and we play the right way, we're a good team and we're going to give ourselves an opportunity to win."
Boston managed to scrap back in the third en route to its sixth win in a row — with Cassidy's club negating some of Pittsburgh's onslaught by shortening shifts and preventing sluggish line changes, while also prioritizing puck management against a team that can make you pay in a hurry with just one turnover or tumbling biscuit.
But given Boston's scorching start to the year, Cassidy is well aware that the B's are going to get their opponent's best — night in and night out. As such, Boston's bench boss is hoping that the wake-up call his players received on Monday night will carry over into Tuesday against a Montreal club that loves pepper the net, and (more importantly) generate quality looks in the process.
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At the end of the day, Marchand is right — two points is two points. And on most nights, Boston's top forward trio is going to eviscerate whatever they are up against, as was the case on Monday (eight combined points for 63-37-88).
But as those 15 minutes showcased, even a Bruins team seemingly showing no signs of slowing down can be knocked off course with just one bad shift or two.
"We just, we weren’t good enough. They were faster than us," Cassidy said. "Their pace was very good tonight, the fastest team I’ve seen this year. So that’s good for our guys to know that we’ve got to play faster if we want to compete with these teams. We won the game tonight, so that’s sometimes a good lesson to learn this time of year.
"We have to pick up our pace to play with teams like that and I imagine we’re going to see another one similar to Pittsburgh. Maybe not as much finish — I shouldn’t say that, Montreal scored a lot. There’s a lot of speed tomorrow, so we’re up against it again."
Stats and graphs via Natural Stat Trick, and Sean Tierney.