For the first time in over a week, the Bruins could finally breathe easy as they exited the TD Garden ice during the second intermission of Tuesday’s game against the Florida Panthers.
The last seven-plus days haven't exactly been friendly to the Bruins, who went from a 10-game point streak to a three-game losing stretch that has often seen Boston behind the eight-ball off of sluggish starts and poor execution down both ends of the ice.
But against Sergei Bobrovsky, Boston finally found a reprieve from this early-season slump. What was a 0-0 deadlock after 20 minutes tilted in favor of Boston in the middle stanza, with David Pastrnak, Joakim Nordstrom, Anders Bjork and Zdeno Chara all lighting the lamp during a scoring flurry that clocked in at under eight minutes.
But after Boston chased Bobrovsky from the game off of its scoring salvo, the Bruins finally appeared unburdened by their sordid skid. As Chara fired a rebound offering past Bobrovsky at 19:31 in the second and did his best Jake DeBrusk impression with an impromptu celly — all once again seemed to be right with the world once again.
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After all, this veteran Bruins club had every reason to be confident going into the final 20 minutes of play. Since the start of the 2010-11 season, Boston has posted a record of 274-16-21 when entering the third period with a lead.
In those rare instances in which Boston failed to secure two points during the aforementioned scenario? Slim one or two-goal leads fell. But with a four-goal cushion, Boston had every right to feel invincible for the start of the third period.
After all, there have only been EIGHT instances in NHL history in which a visiting team has erased a four-goal deficit in third period and come away with a win.
Well, make it nine now — much to an already ailing Bruins club’s chagrin.
What once seemed like an easy road to two points — and more importantly, an end to a three-game losing streak — was turned on its head in shocking fashion on Tuesday, as the Panthers extended Boston's woes with a four-goal retort in the final period — setting the stage for an eventual 5-4 shootout loss.
As Bruce Cassidy noted postgame, there's an awful lot to digest in a game such as this — in what stood as the first time that the Bruins have relinquished a four-goal lead and lost since a 7-6 overtime loss to the Maple Leafs way back on December 30, 1989.
A collapse of that magnitude isn't achieved from one major misstep or lapse, but rather of slew of shortcomings that snowballed into a pathetic showing from the B's in their own barn. Cassidy went through the laundry list — poor puck management, lackluster discipline, another poor showing from the penalty kill (2-for-4), a tepid approach in the offensive zone, etc. etc.
But above all else, Cassidy was most exasperated by the final two minutes of regulation. For all that transpired in the previous 18 minutes, Boston was still alive — clinging to a one-goal lead.
Sure, it was far from an advantageous spot to be in, but with the likes of Chara, Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, Charlie McAvoy and David Pastrnak out on the ice — Boston had been in such a scenario countless times before, and Cassidy fully expected the usual suspects to once again bail the B's out of trouble.
That went out the door as soon as Aleksander Barkov drove to the net, collapsing Boston's defensive structure. With all but one Bruin with their back turned from the slot, only Patrice Bergeron could watch as Keith Yandle scooped up the loose puck and snapped it past Tuukka Rask to force overtime.
"This is a team that’s closed out games for years, and the last goal to me – put everything else aside – is disappointing," Cassidy said. "We get beat one-on-one off the rush, winger circling out of the scoring area knowing the game is on the line. You could sit here and argue that the guy’s holding Bergy’s stick and can’t clear the puck at the end, but structurally we were bad on that last goal. That’s the disappointing part to me. That’s when we’re usually rock-solid."
Even if Boston had managed to scrap together enough moxie in overtime to earn a second point on the night, that horrid third period would have still likely lingered on the mind of Boston's bench boss. Of course, such a scenario never manifested. Despite generating six scoring chances during the 3v3 session, the B's were unable to step on the throat of backup netminder Sam Montembeault — with quality looks in Grade-A areas often negated by self-inflicted mistakes, highlighted by a number of head-scratching overpassing sequences.
"It’s going to sting for a few days, but maybe it’ll be a good motivating factor," Cassidy said. "We’re going into Toronto and then playing Washington, so we’ve got two strong teams coming up. Hopefully our guys have a bit of burr in the saddle and want to get back in the win column, kind of how we did the first 40 minutes."