For sinking Bruins, a loss like Thursday night goes far beyond absence of Bergeron & Marchand

Taylor Hall was candid when asked Wednesday morning about the unenviable task in front of the Bruins. 

Yes, his first response was an expected reflex of clichéd hockey prose — with Hall sticking to the script and stressing that every skater on Boston’s depth chart was going to have to step up in wake of a few major absences on the ice. 

But he relented in short order. Because after all, there’s no way to truly replace two franchise anchors in Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand — especially over an extended stretch.

“Replacing your captain and a player like Marshy is not just as simple as everyone doing a bit more,” Hall said. “We're gonna miss those guys, there's no doubt. So you have to find a way to all be the best version of ourselves and play collectively as a team. Not to say that we're gonna have to play perfect hockey or anything like that, but we're gonna have to be dialed in."

Such was wishful thinking at the time. 

Thirty-six hours later, Bruce Cassidy was equally candid as he fielded questions at the podium. And he had good reason to be. 

As Hall hinted, the Bruins did not play perfect hockey on Thursday night. It wasn’t great, good or even respectable. Labeling it as bad might have been pulling punches as far as assessing Boston's performance out on the ice. 

Yes, you could make the argument that the shorthanded B’s roster was walking into a scheduled loss against a loaded Hurricanes team.

But a 6-0 pantsing delivered by Rod Brind'Amour’s Canes was not a lopsided score decided solely by the lack of Bergeron and Marchand on Boston’s top line. 

The Bruins are fully cognizant of the fact that they’re going to have to tread water over the next few weeks without their top forwards in place. But it’s a damning statement against the rest of this roster to submit such a disheartening effort against a Carolina club that has outscored them, 16-1, over three meetings this year. 

For as much as both Bergeron and Marchand have served as 200-foot cheat codes for the B’s over the years — frequently bailing them out of tough binds thanks to their proven production and leadership — it’s not as though the rest of this roster is constituted by AHL talent (despite what the optics were in Thursday’s laugher).

But besides Charlie McAvoy — who drew praise from Cassidy for his efforts to spark the club with some physical play in the early going — Boston’s bench boss had little in terms of ringing endorsements for the rest of Boston’s established core on Thursday.

"There's leaders in that room,” Cassidy said. “There are enough leaders. Charlie Coyle is a leader. Carlo, McAvoy, Pastrnak. We put A's on their sweaters. Taylor Hall — he's an MVP in this league, he's 30 years old. These guys need to take charge of the situation. If they can't see that, what's in front of them, then shame on us, honestly. I mean, it's that simple.”

Let’s go down the list. 

Coyle? Despite having 80 percent of his faceoffs set in the offensive zone, the pivot was unable to drive play as the new de-facto 2C — with Boston’s offense once again drying up against Carolina netminder Frederik Andersen (he of a .990 save percentage against the B’s this season). 

Brandon Carlo? On a night in which Boston’s D corps was once again bullied and bulldozed by a frantic Carolina forecheck, Carlo once again stuck out like a sore thumb — with his soft chip out to the slot setting up a second-period strike from Andrei Svechnikov.

"It's going to happen from time to time to any player, especially against a team that pressures you,” Cassidy said of Boston’s D-zone struggles. “But it happens too often to our group and they just are going to have to figure it out a little bit and we're gonna have to help them figure it out. But at the end of the day, these are situations that happen in a game where you've got to make some smarter, better decisions.”

Pastrnak and Hall? Elevated into a top-line role with Bergeron and Marchand out of commission — Boston’s best remaining offensive conduits did little to disrupt the Hurricanes, with Boston only landing three shots on goal in the 12:12 of 5v5 ice time that they logged together. 

We could go down the rest of this lineup, but this is a column — not a Tolkein novel. It was ugly all around for a Bruins roster that managed to perform below the already middling expectations placed upon them in this matchup.

"There was just not enough pushback,” Cassidy said. “So how are we gonna whether it? We're certainly going to need a little more pushback from guys that are expected to bring it and some other veteran guys that might not, but have to step up in their absence and we were lacking both tonight in huge quantities.”

There’s no sugar-coating the slog that awaits the Bruins for however long both Marchand and Bergeron remain on the shelf. 

Unless you’re a hockey purist (or just a glutton for punishment), you might want to avert your eyes over the next few games. Because if the Bruins are going to accrue points at a steady clip during this stretch, it’s not going to be a particularly enjoyable product on the ice.

But let’s join both Hall and Cassidy and add some candor here. Sure, this team is severely shorthanded right now. But they’re a hell of a lot better than whatever played out on the ice Thursday. 

And if they’re not? Well, then the Bruins are in far worse shape than we thought. 

“There's a lot of leaders in there. There's a lot of guys that care,” Nick Foligno said. “And no one's happy about what happened tonight. But one thing is we're going to find a way through it. And we have to. We know Marchy is out for a little while, and we don't know what Bergy's status is, exactly, but we have to figure it out for them.

“They've done a lot of dirty work for us all these years. ... Now it's on us to help them out and make sure that when they do get back in the lineup, we're on the upward trajectory. So that's how the guys feel in that room. Everyone takes it on the chin a little bit when those guys go out and we don't have the game we expect to have.”