Without much context, one could draw plenty of concerning connotations from how the Bruins’ practice wrapped up down in Arlington, Virginia, on Tuesday afternoon.
As most of Boston’s skaters jumped into a pig pile on the sheet at Medstar Capitals Iceplex, Tuukka Rask took out his frustrations on his stick, smashing it into smithereens against the crossbar.
https://twitter.com/KuzyBeCackling/status/1204472206950096896
The only thing missing was a few milk crates for the B’s netminder, but the rest of the B’s roster wasn’t quite done, breaking out into a complete line — err, roster — brawl before breaking out into individual brouhahas.
https://twitter.com/NHLBruins/status/1204486590371905537
In the midst of a brief three-game losing skid, including regulation losses to the Avalanche and cellar-dwelling Senators, perhaps these scraps were Boston’s premature tribute to Festivus — opting to air out their grievances amongst themselves after a rare bump in the road this season?
Well, not exactly.
Rask’s theatrics and the Bruins’ subsequent melee were all in good fun, with both Bruce Cassidy and multiple players noting following practice that a lighter workload was going to be prescribed over a bad skate following Monday’s defeat up in Ottawa.
"The ups and downs are good to go through,” Brandon Carlo told reporters down in Virginia. “Like today, when we can come in here and have a great, positive attitude, I think it will just help us later on when we go through tough times."
"Today was a little looser day, we talked about a couple of things before practice," Cassidy added. "Listen, our record is very good, but we've got to get back to enjoying our game a little more while taking care of business and balancing the two.
"We all are aware — every man in that room, all the coaches know — we're not playing to our standard every night. We get pockets of it like a lot of teams, but that's our goal now, to get to our standard. Maybe today helps us a little, having a little bit of fun on the ice at the end of practice."
Even amid this recent stretch of subpar play, the Bruins have built themselves some breathing room thanks to their torrid start, holding an 11-point cushion at the top of the Atlantic Division. The two expected contenders for the divisional crown in the Maple Leafs and Lightning currently sit 14 and 15 points behind Boston, respectively.
Still, the Bruins need to snap out of this lull in short order, given that the remaining three games of this road trip will feature matchups against the Capitals, Lightning, and Panthers — who sit in second place in the Atlantic.
Next up on the docket are the Capitals, the lone team in the NHL that has accrued more points than Boston up to this point off of a 22-5-5 record.
It remains to be seen how much this lighter practice perhaps rights the ship in what has been a lackluster couple of games for the Bruins, but Cassidy isn’t letting a bump in the road knock his club off course in what has been an overwhelmingly positive couple of months.
"We use the word grateful a lot. I think we all lose sight of that," Cassidy said. "For me personally, I get to coach probably the best group of men I've ever been around, a team I grew up idolizing. I think sometimes you forget that when you get short-tempered. I think players sometimes forget it when things don't go their way.
"(Bruins sports psychologist) Dr. (Stephen) Durant is a guy we use in meetings, he's the one that brings that up a lot in his meetings. I think (Patrice Bergeron) is a big guy when it came to being grateful after his concussion years ago. I think he appreciates that he still gets to play the game at a high level. So there's different aspects of that, but in general, we try to use that word when things get a little bumpy."
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