ELMONT, N.Y. — For those fortunate few who managed to avoid watching the Bruins’ listless performance at UBS Arena, you’re in luck.
If you’d like a succinct summary of the debacle that played out on Long Island, you don’t need to subject yourself to a two-hour recap, nor do you have to lay siege to your corneas by way of a 10-minute “highlight” tape.
Rather, if you want to compress a three-hour slog into just a few seconds, look below.
Trailing by a goal with less than 7:30 remaining in regulation, the Bruins finally seemed to have a quality chance developing against Isles netminder Ilya Sorokin, with Nick Foligno fishing a puck out of a prolonged board battle and feeding it out to Curtis Lazar, gliding in over the blue line.
With a clear lane between him and the netminder, Lazar wound up and uncorked a slapper. It traveled all of a few feet. Sure enough, Lazar’s stick splintered upon impact with the biscuit, with Urho Vaakanainen blowing a tire in the foreground adding to the ugly optics.
Less than a minute later, the Islanders twisted the knife by way of a Mathew Barzal dagger — a scoring sequence jumpstarted by a breakout down the other end of the ice that was facilitated by a sleepwalking David Pastrnak and Trent Frederic.
— Bruins Stats (@bruins_stats) February 18, 2022
Yeah, it was that kind of night.
Frankly, I wouldn’t knock you for averting your eyes altogether with a contest like this. Go ahead, treat this game film like footage from “The Ring.” It ain’t worth the damage it might cause.
The poor timing with Lazar’s twig is the best summary on a night in which Boston’s offense once again dried up, this time against a middling opponent that the Bruins should have bested with ease.
Of course, it’d be easy to point to the absence of Brad Marchand as the obvious missing cog that has left the B’s offense sputtering. And you’d be correct! (To the surprise of no one.)
Yes, it was to be expected that the Bruins were going to be looking at an uphill climb with their O-zone production with Marchand (and Patrice Bergeron, for that matter) on the shelf.
But in the four games that Marchand has missed since the winger was slapped with a six-game suspension, the Bruins have scored a grand total of four goals. Four goals — in four games.
As we said a week ago, sordid performances like that go far beyond just missing a star player or two in your lineup. That’s a damning indictment on the rest of the roster if Marchand’s presence is the lone thing keeping Boston in play for more than a couple of tallies on game night.
"It's kind of been like that all year,” Taylor Hall, who scored Boston’s lone goal on Thursday, said of Boston’s lean offense. “I mean, even when Brad is in the lineup, it's not like we're beating teams 6-5 or 4-3 — it's usually a 3-2 win or 3-1 or 4-1 with an empty netter — those kinds of games that we have to be comfortable playing and tonight, we're up by one going into the second — that should be a signal for us to lay on the gas and keep going.
“Unfortunately, I don't think we did that. And I don't care what their record is there. This team has had a lot of success, especially in their building. They're going to play hard, they're going to get pucks to the net and get greasy goals. That's how they play and that's what they did to us tonight.”
For Bruce Cassidy, the most disheartening result on a night in which there were plenty of them might have been down the other end of the ice.
After Boston built itself a one-goal lead after the first 20 minutes (holding a 10-1 edge in 5v5 scoring chances in the process), a pushback from the Islanders was a given. And yet, the Bruins once again fell asleep at the wheel as the minutes ticked off the clock — allowing yet another team to punch back and find their game.
In total, in the five games since the All-Star Break, the Bruins have been outscored, 14-0, during the second and third periods of play.
Marchand or not, that’s embarrassing — especially through the lens of just this one road game against an Isles crew that entered the night with a 3-16-2 record against teams in playoff positioning.
"We were the better team in the first period. They're at home. Obviously, they got a lot of pride,” Cassidy said. Happens a lot, home team doesn't have a good first period — usually, there's a little push in the second and we've addressed that. It happens to us a lot.
“You just got to be ready for it and execute — got to be able to execute at a level to sort of stem the pushes that they have. We seemed to spend the first five, six minutes in our own end because we couldn't execute the breakout, support the puck and be strong on it, and that gives them some juice. … They did all the things I think they typically do when they're on.”
Yes, in an 82-game slog, even the best teams in the league are due for a few stinkers.
But how much does a game like Thursday feel like an outlier at this point? Yes, it might have been more startling given the poor pedigree of the opponent, but the roots of Boston’s issues on Thursday have been the same as they’ve been most of the year — with a dearth of high-end offensive talent and a concerning lack of push-back dooming them over 60 minutes of action.
Maybe it’s time to stop making excuses.
Maybe this is simply the team that the Bruins are.
And if that is indeed the case — some major changes need to be made. Or else fans might need to avert their eyes for a whole lot longer.