Taylor Hall wasn’t looking for excuses in the aftermath of a 4-1 loss to Vegas on Tuesday night — a decisive defeat where even a three-goal deficit didn't paint the picture of just how listless the B’s were out on the Garden ice.
It was an admirable course of action for Hall to take, considering the literary of scapegoats at Boston’s disposal.
The cliched narrative of teams dragging their feet back on home ice after an extensive road trip.
Running into a buzzsaw of a Golden Knights team that has averaged close to five goals per game since Dec. 1.
And, of course, the most prevalent (and legitimate) excuse: the absence of two top-six wingers in Brad Marchand and Craig Smith — both lost due to COVID-19 protocols for the next 10 days.
But on a night in which a shorthanded B’s roster only managed to pepper Robin Lehner (he of a not-so sterling .870 save percentage in his last seven outings) with 24 total shots on net — Hall wasn’t going to chalk up all of that O-zone futility to just two absences.
"I mean, we played three games with Marchy out and I thought we played well,” Hall said. “We did our best in his absence. Everyone knows what he does for our team and I thought we did a good job making up for that when he was out with his suspension. Today, I just can't really buy into the excuses — the travel or the COVID stuff. Every team deals with and it is what it is. So we have to respond and have to get better. “
Indeed, the Bruins can and should assess their play through an intrinsic lens following a loss like Tuesday.
Even without Marchand (whose Hart Trophy finalist candidacy continues to be validated with every game he misses), the Bruins still have the personnel to muster more than the meager chances they managed to generate against a rather leaky Vegas defense.
Jeremy Swayman could have been sharper between the pipes, while Boston’s D corps should be kicking itself over the number of times the Golden Knights managed to thread passes behind their ranks and put the B’s on their heels.
Hall’s sentiments are the right angle to take, especially after Boston managed to secure out two regulation wins against the Oilers and Flames — but also played with fire by getting woefully outshot and out-chanced in both contests.
And yet, for as much as a few COVID-related absences are more of an expected hurdle than a cataclysmic development for an NHL roster in 2021, the timing of Boston’s misfortunes — coupled with both the personnel involved and the potential for a far more wide-ranging outbreak — presents plenty of cause for concern.
Even though players like Hall are focused on moving forward with the hand that they’re dealt and rolling with the punches that a new day provides, that mentality is marred when each new day could present another situation in which key cogs are sapped from the depth chart due to COVID-related setbacks.
Both Marchand and Smith are the only two B’s players currently on the shelf. But given the growing network of positive cases woven around the league, Bruce Cassidy and his club will likely be watching the turn of the calendar with bated breath in hopes that more Bruins personnel avoid a similar fate as Marchand and Smith in the days ahead.
The optics when comparing Boston’s situation with other clubs shouldn’t offer much in terms of reassurance.
The last team that the Bruins faced prior to Tuesday in Calgary is now sidelined through at least Thursday — with nine total players and one staff member entering COVID-19 protocols in the span of just two days.
The Carolina Hurricanes have also seen their cases spike in short order via a trek out west that's been completely sidetracked — with Sebastian Aho, Seth Jarvis and a Carolina trainer currently mired in a Vancouver hotel, and a subsequent game against the Wild canned after four more players tested positive.
In Vancouver, morning skate was scrubbed on Tuesday after two players entered COVID protocols. The Canucks still played on against the Blue Jackets on Tuesday night — only for Tucker Poolman to get yanked out of the game due to also entering into COVID protocols.
There’s a slew of other examples all around the league — with 25+ players, coaches and staff entering protocols over the past 36 hours.
It’s a concerning development, especially for a Bruins team that not only battled with the league’s top COVID hotspot in Calgary just a few days ago — but also had Marchand on the ice for Tuesday’s practice just an hour before entering protocols himself.
For as much as the Bruins won’t harp on excuses, there’s only so much this club can do if more cases continue to sprout up — especially if it sidelines other key players in what is a hectic stretch of six games in 10 days.
"We had a little bit of a scare yesterday,” Cassidy said. “Today, it's real. A couple other ones were close. So it was an interesting day in that regard. Let's hope that's the end of it. We've lost two key players. We've been fortunate enough up until now. We didn't lose anybody. So now you got two and who knows tomorrow, right?
“You see different teams string two or three days together, so we got our fingers crossed and hope that nothing comes back tonight from today's testing and we can just kind of forge ahead with the players we have and just be better on Thursday — which I think we will. I honestly think, mentally, it cost us tonight and we needed to play a better first period, a safer first period.”
Even though this upcoming slate of games does offer some opportunity for Boston to recoup points in the standings against struggling clubs like the Islanders and Canadiens, those chances are severely hampered if the B's on-ice epinephrine in Marchand isn’t available to spark Boston’s offense — and those odds will be further dashed if more players join him and Smith on the COVID shelf.
Even though Hall said all of the right things on Tuesday, he did relent when asked about the frustrations sprouting up as more cases get revealed across the NHL — and plenty of other leagues as well.
With more testing looking like the NHL’s next move as it ramps up more protocols, more cases — symptomatic and asymptomatic — are inevitability going to be announced.
For a top-heavy team like the Bruins, it could be a devastating blow if more positive tests are tripped in the next day or so — with only a set of potential postponements saving this club from further misery in the short term.
For Hall, it’s a brutal development, given that the Bruins are fully vaccinated and have adhered to the protocols that were put in place long before the 2021-22 season commenced.
No excuses? Sure.
But as they await the next round of testing with little in terms of clarity, it sure feels like the Bruins — and countless other NHL teams — are all playing with a losing hand until the league steps in to curb these games over the next week.
“I mean, we all took the shots and we're in the same situation again,” Hall said. “So it is disheartening. We're on the road and we're trying to do the right things away from hockey. It is what it is. I mean, that's the world we live in right now.
“Hopefully, at some point — hopefully this spring is the last time we have to deal with this stuff. But it is disheartening. You're seeing it in football, you're seeing it in basketball, you're seeing it all over the place. I know Smitty and Marchy — they're feeling fine. They could be playing the game. So we'll just deal with it.”