Growing pains on blue line come back to hurt Bruins in OT loss to Isles

Back in March, long before his roster was bolstered via deadline pickups and a slew of regulars returning following stings by the injury bug, Bruce Cassidy was candid when assessing the state of his blue line.

While some of the vision Boston mapped out when it came to reworking a D corps without both Zdeno Chara and Torey Krug in the lineup had come to fruition thanks to Charlie McAvoy’s continued ascension as one of the game’s premier blueliners, it was far from a seamless transition. 

After all, Boston’s plan involved a number of younger skaters thrust into regular minutes, with the hope that players like Jeremy Lauzon and Jakub Zboril would be able to cut their teeth and sort out some of their developmental speed bumps during the course of the 2021 regular season. 

Those miscues were to be expected, and part of the learning process for any player dealing with the growing pains that come with adjusting to the NHL game. But shaking out those gaffes during the dog days of February and March would be welcomed over any potential fumbles once the stakes were raised this summer. 

“At the start of the year when we went into the season with who we thought would play for us — I thought they handled it very well,” Cassidy said back on March 22 of his young defensemen’s ability to handle playoff hockey. “Now, is the first month of the season equivalent to four rounds of playoffs? Of course not.  … It's a big ask for anybody to get through round after round against elite players. And so we're no different in that regard and some of the guys would have been untested in that regard, so the easy answer is always to say I don't know — because that's it. “

Boston’s bench boss was just as candid on Monday night at TD Garden. But this time, rather than plainly state his uncertainty when it comes to the playoff moxie of his young defenders, he unfortunately got the answer out on the ice. 

Despite a spirited third-period rally that forced overtime, the Bruins were unable to seal the deal and give themselves a 2-0 stranglehold in their second-round series against the Islanders, with Casey Cizikas cashing in on a breakaway bid at 14:48 in the extra frame to close out a 4-3 win for New York.

The Isles’ pesky fourth-line pivot might have been the hero on the night for the visiting club, but Jeremy Lauzon — much to his own displeasure — might never have to pay for a dinner at Borrelli’s either following his overtime blunder.

Cizikas’ clear path to Tuukka Rask was the brutal byproduct of poor decision-making and some heinous puck luck, with an attempted D-to-D feed from Lauzon ricocheting off the skate of Charlie Coyle and careening the biscuit back over the blue line and into the neutral zone. Cizikas, skating out high to challenge Lauzon at the point, was more than happy to pick up the skittering puck and was promptly off to the races. 

Game.

“We made a play that obviously was ill-advised and they scored on a breakaway,” Cassidy said postgame. “That's what I saw on the overtime goal.”

Hockey is an unforgiving sport — a game of mistakes in which a player’s performance is sometimes only as good as their last shift.

After a largely underwhelming stretch of play during regulation, Lauzon saved the B’s in the opening minutes of the fourth period — dropping to his knee and negating a Grade-A look from Josh Bailey that seemed primed to soar past Tuukka Rask.

An encouraging play from a defenseman with all of nine games of playoff experience under his belt — all negated just a few minutes later off of a painful misread of a pass that, in a best-case scenario, was going to sail into no-man’s land. 

It’s been that kind of spring thus far for Lauzon, with the 24-year-old skater out on the ice for seven goals against so far during playoff action. That’s pretty concerning, especially considering the fact that the defender has only actually been out on the ice for three of Boston’s seven playoff tilts due to injury. 

For Cassidy, the primary issue with Lauzon’s miscue lies in the fact that a safer play was readily available to the defenseman by way of a play down the wall. While a D-to-D feed might seem like a reflexive move in that situation, especially with Cizikas bearing down on him, Lauzon’s no-look offering obviously didn’t account for the fact that his D partner in McAvoy wasn’t ready to receive said offering up at the point. 

"We'll go D to D high. We did it a lot. We got a lot of good offense from it tonight. But his partner wasn't there. So he just has to look,” Cassidy said of Lauzon. “I mean, you have to survey the ice. Any time you have the puck — it's a fluid hockey game. And there are set plays for us that we run, but there has to be a player there. 

“So you have to look and usually you look first — and that's some of the learning curve for younger guys. Take a look before the puck gets to you, recognize what's going on, because his partner wasn't there, he's recovering back out.  So Charlie (Coyle) was trying to stay high in his spot.”

Still, for as crushing as Lauzon’s mistake was for a Bruins team that could have really put on the Isles on the ropes Monday night, it’s not a forgone conclusion that he’ll be watching Game 3 from high above the ice at Nassau Coliseum.

Given the state of Boston’s depth on the blue line, Jarred Tinordi might be the only possible replacement for Lauzon — especially with Kevan Miller’s status still up in the air due to a likely concussion. With other veteran contributors such as Steven Kampfer and John Moore also out due to injury, Boston very well could roll Lauzon back out there on Thursday night, especially if they think the Isles’ speed could cause issues for a replacement like Tinordi.

If failure is truly the best teacher — Lauzon was dealt a solemn lesson Monday in just how quickly a game can unravel and a series can shift based on just one misplay. But with the state of Boston's defense still awfully thin, the youngster could be gifted with a prime opportunity to atone for his errors down on Long Island in short order. 

"Shit happens. He's a great player for us, he competes very hard," Brad Marchand said of the message to Lauzon following the loss. "And he's out there every night working his butt off and competing for the group. We all make mistakes, we've all been there. It's tough when it happens to you, but you know, we're gonna bounce back. It's not the end of world. It's 1-1. 

"We've just gotta worry about that next one. It's all about how we regroup in here and move forward. That's the thing about playoffs, you gotta kind of be like an elephant and have a quick memory and just worry about the next day. … It's all about how we bounce back as a group."