Ryan: Instead of letting Connor McDavid beat them on Thursday, the Bruins did the deed themselves

At multiple points during his postgame presser on Thursday night, an exasperated Bruce Cassidy chose his words carefully when it came to chronicling what went wrong for his team against the Edmonton Oilers.

Granted, such is the dejected sentiment that multiple bench bosses across the league have shared in the immediate aftermath of the maelstrom that is Connor McDavid passing through their town. 

In the days leading up to Thursday’s showdown against the NHL’s top player — and an Oilers team cashing in on close to 50 percent of its power-play opportunities — Cassidy remarked that sometimes all you can do is simply tip your cap when McDavid carves a swath through your defense. 

Time and time again, even the stoutest D corps and PK units have been reduced to soot when McDavid is afforded even a few feet of frozen real estate with the puck on his stick.

Had McDavid silenced the Garden crowd with a casual (for him, at least), four-point night or a physics-bending tally like the one he reeled off against the Rangers last week, it would have been a disappointing — but perhaps palatable – result for Cassidy and his staff.

But such wasn’t the case on Thursday night.

"They respected the Edmonton Oilers,” Cassidy said of his team. “I think we were trying hard to limit the damage their big guns were doing.”

Sure enough, McDavid ended his night with just one measly assist — which, given his reputation, sure seems like a good night at the office for Boston’s defensive unit. 

For the Bruins, keeping McDavid in check was like navigating a ship through a storm. That’s all well and good, but it wasn’t going to earn any praise from the captain of the vessel. 

Not when the B’s watercraft still ended up getting scuttled after steering right into an iceberg.

The Bruins might have respected McDavid and the Oilers’ personnel, for the most part. But what they overlooked in the process during Thursday’s 5-3 loss left an even more sour taste in Cassidy’s mouth.

“We absolutely beat ourselves. 100 percent. …  We're the Bruins — we have some good players and there's a lot that goes into beating yourself,” Cassidy said. “Some of it is the respect for the game of freakin' hockey, right? ... That's on us to make sure that the message gets across. You got to respect the game and play the right way and play the way you need to play to have success.”

Of course, even with McDavid kept in check, Edmonton’s other offensive conduit in Leon Draisaitl buried the B’s with a three-point night — including a pair of tallies in the third period that erased Boston’s third lead of the night, and later gave the visitors the lead for good. 

But given the manner in which the star center lit the lamp — especially on the equalizer — that third-period collapse stands as more of an indictment on Boston’s self-inflicted miscues than a testament to Draisaitl’s own impressive individual talent. 

Brandon Carlo may not be known as much of a poised playmaker on the back end, but his feed at 6:22 in the third managed to hit a forward right on the tape in Grade-A ice. 

The only issue, of course, is that the recipient was a skater in an orange-and-blue sweater — with Draisaitl snagging Carlo’s flub and snapping it past Linus Ullmark to knot things up at three goals apiece. 

"An unfortunate mistake for sure,” Carlo said. “But it's how you respond after that and I didn't do a very good job there.”

 Just minutes later, Draisaitl found the back of the net once again — with another D-zone lapse from Carlo giving the Oilers pivot the space he needed to hand Edmonton its first lead of the night. It was an ugly sequence all around, with Jake DeBrusk unable to seal off playmaking dynamo … Cody Ceci … up high and along the half wall before his feed found Draisaitl down low. 

"One of those nights,” Carlo lamented. “The third period — one of the worst ones that I've had in my NHL career."

Some ugly gaffes in the D-zone might stand as the primary takeaway from a loss like this, but perhaps the most maddening aspect for Cassidy was what played out down the other end of the ice.

Which, to be blunt, wasn’t a whole lot.

Boston’s big guns once again did their part with three 5v5 goals tallied when Marchand-Bergeron-Pastrnak were out on the ice. But the missed opportunities to pile on even more shots against Edmonton netminder Mikko Koskinen overshadowed all of the tangible production that Boston managed to put forward. 

“There was plenty of opportunities for us to shoot the puck and definitely overpassed a little bit and that's unacceptable — especially in crunch time,” Pastrnak said. 

Well, even with the overpassing — at least the Bergeron line managed to put some goals on the board. The same can't be said for a middle-six grouping that has continued to drag down an offense averaging just 2.73 goals per game (23rd in the NHL). 

Whether it be guys with zero tallies on the season like Erik Haula (11 games) and Craig Smith (eight games) or other stagnant offensive performers like DeBrusk (two goals and zero assists), the Bruins simply aren't getting enough contributions further down on the depth chart — a predictable development made even worse by that grouping's hesitancy to put more pucks on net. 

"That goes back to guys trying to make plays that aren't there or they don't have the ability to make.  ... So you have to get the message across if there's different ways to score goals," Cassidy said. "Not everyone can be Bergeron's line. Not everyone can play like McDavid. So we have to, as a staff, we have to do a better job of getting the players to understand what they can be successful at and how they can help the team win. 

"And then the offensive part of it is just getting a little more shot mentality. We have addressed it, but clearly it's fallen on deaf ears. So we gotta do a better job of messaging that.”

In some respects, Cassidy probably wishes he could be in the same spot as the multiple other coaches this year that have had to sum up a game in which McDavid picked their defense apart. 

It's easier to compartmentalize and move on from a loss in which forces outside of your control — namely the personnel on the other bench — dictate the course of a contest.

But when it comes to pointing fingers following a night like tonight, the Bruins only have themselves to blame. 

And if they don't sort things out in short order — it's only a matter of time before this ship runs aground ... or worse. 

"Another good team found a way to beat us in crunch time," Cassidy said. "So it’s not by accident anymore. So we gotta do a better job.”