With valuable points up for grabs, letdown showings like Friday night stand as tough pill to swallow for surging B's

Chalk it up, perhaps, to what amounted to three games in four nights for the Bruins.

Perhaps it was the potential post-dose fatigue and other lingering effects after a large portion of Boston's traveling party received a COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday night. 

Or maybe Friday's listless effort for the first 50 minutes of regulation was just a direct byproduct having to spend five days and four nights in the sunny metropolis that is Buffalo.

But whatever the case might be, none of those factors hold much weight when it comes to absolving the Bruins' performance on the KeyBank Center ice for most of Friday's matchup.

"I think we just got away from our game plan," Steven Kampfer said following Boston's eventual 6-4 loss to Buffalo, which snapped the B's six-game win streak. "It's tough to win hockey games when you show up for essentially the last eight, nine minutes of the game. So that's on us in the room. It's the National Hockey League, every team's good. Everybody can beat everybody. So you got to show up and play games like that. So that's on us in the room to make sure that when seven o'clock rolls around, we're ready for 60 minutes."

Sooner or later, the post-deadline shine covering a suddenly revitalized Bruins' roster was eventually going to wear off.

Despite winning his first three games following an extended stint on the shelf, Tuukka Rask was not always going to be impenetrable in net. Boston's overtaxed penalty kill was not going to keep bailing out the club night in and night out. And even on a night in which Boston tallied 4+ goals at even-strength play for the third time in four games, too many costly turnovers, stints of puck watching and other miscues were too much to overcome.

As Kampfer noted, any team can win on any given night.

But for anyone to tab Friday's ugly showing (at least for 2 1/2 periods) as a "scheduled loss" isn't acceptable. Not for this Bruins team — and especially not when looking at the opportunity Boston has in front of it as far as the East Division standings are concerned.

Had Boston managed to take care of business against a Buffalo team that A - was on the same taxing schedule as them (three games in four nights) and B - was rolling out a rookie goalie making his NHL debut after posting an .888 save percentage down in the AHL ranks this season, an already promising push up the East Division standings was going to receive another shot in the arm.

With the three teams ahead of Boston in the East (the Capitals, Islanders and Penguins) all off on Friday, the Bruins were in prime position to recoup some points against their top competition within the division, with two points in hand against all three clubs giving Boston plenty of runway to rise up from the fourth-place position that they've been stuck in for months now. With a win, Boston suddenly would have found themselves just one point behind both the Islanders and Penguins with another game in hand against both teams — while also keeping distance between them and the fifth-place Rangers, who sit six points behind them in the division following another regulation win on Friday.

Of course, Boston very well could leapfrog Pittsburgh with a strong showing in its pivotal two-game set on Sunday and Tuesday, but Friday's result stood as another example of a very talented B's roster making things hard on themselves in a cutthroat East Division.

Even without Patrice Bergeron in the lineup, Boston had no business getting put on the ropes by a team like Buffalo for most of the night. Yes, any team can win any night — and sometimes points can be decided by way of a fortuitous bounce of the puck or a tipped shot. But a team of Boston's caliber shouldn't be credited with just a single takeaway against a rudderless team like Buffalo — nor should they be credited with 10 fewer blocked shots down the other end of the ice.

"They were a hungry team," Bruce Cassidy said of Buffalo. "They went to the net well. They shot more tonight. And they were willing to block more shots, they had a couple of really big blocks, guys put themselves in harm's way. And that's what it takes to win. We had those blocks last night, we saw it. A couple of our guys got hit hard with pucks and little things you got to do to win hockey games in this league. And they did it tonight. And I didn't think we did enough of it."

Due to Boston's post-deadline surge and a favorable schedule down the stretch, what seemed like a B's club destined to settle into that fourth seed in the East suddenly has found itself in the driver's seat when it comes to determining its own fate — with Boston still in line to battle the Sabres and Devils four more times in its final 10 games. But if Boston wants to realistically surpass teams like the Penguins and Islanders and hold home-ice advantage in front of a potentially more-filled TD Garden this summer, these letdowns against lesser teams aren't going to cut it.

Perhaps it's a bit harsh given Boston's winning ways over the past week to take them to task, but given both the raised expectations and the opportunity suddenly afforded to Boston, they can't afford more stinkers down the stretch. For as much as Boston's recent stretch has revitalized the hopes of Boston challenging for the No. 1 seed, Boston likely would already be sitting pretty had it not squandered points earlier this season — especially to lesser foes such as the Devils (2-3-1).

But at this point, perhaps the best course of action is to just simply push forward. With four total points separating Boston from the No. 1 Caps, there is still plenty of time for Boston to make up ground over the final three weeks of the season. But if only a point or two ends up separating Boston from a favorable matchup come the postseason, these "too little, too late" showings against teams like Buffalo are going to loom large.

"We've played a lot of hockey, so we can't dwell on it," Cassidy said. "It's too late in the year for that. You need points. We didn't get them. We got to focus on Pittsburgh, get some rest tomorrow.  ... In reality, Buffalo was probably the better team and deserved to win. But we did put ourselves in a position to get some points at the end. So that's a positive, but as I said earlier, not enough. It hurts to win. And I'm not sure we did enough of the hard things tonight to get the win. And I think they did."