Tuesday’s beatdown loss to Leafs shows Bruins still have questions that need to be answered on defense

The message from coach to player has been clear and concise for the last couple of weeks now.

Of course, hockey is a game of mistakes, and bench bosses can often find plenty of avenues to critique when assessing the shortcomings of a particular player in a game setting — be it indecisiveness with the puck, bad gaps, etc. 

But for a blueliner in Connor Clifton, whose game thrives, and can be thwarted, by his bold play out on the ice, Bruce Cassidy’s message night in and night out has remained fixated on one overriding principle. 

"I've told him this, 'Don't go shoot yourself in the foot tonight, Cliff.' You can joke a little with Cliffy, but the message is just keep straight ahead,” Cassidy said of Clifton’s game. “Keep doing the little things well, play to your strengths. Risk-reward, make sure you're managing that. That's always been Cliffy's — his risk-reward management can get off some days.”

Tuesday was indeed one of those days for the third-pairing defenseman.

Against a team in the Maple Leafs that boasts the quick-strike capabilities and offensive force to tear your D-zone structure to shreds, Clifton unfortunately chummed the waters with an array of errant feeds, mismanaged pucks and Grade-A chances down low. 

On a night in which Toronto lit the lamp six times, a sluggish start from Clifton put the visitors in the driver’s seat early. 

Just over five minutes into the contest, a misplaced pass from Clifton to Matt Grzelcyk missed its target. Seconds later, Toronto had a 1-0 lead, with a fortunate bounce off the boards setting up a tally from Colin Blackwell down near the crease. 

In the dying minutes of the opening frame, Clifton’s willingness to uncork shots from the blue line backfired — with his attempt clanging off Alex Kerfoot’s leg and casting the puck out to the neutral zone. Once again, the Leafs made something out of a harmless sequence in a hurry, with Kerfoot racing ahead and tucking the biscuit past Jeremy Swayman to give the Leafs a 3-1 lead going into the first intermission.

"We're a good team — you're going to make some mistakes when you're under pressure,” Cassidy said following Boston’s 6-4 loss to Toronto. “Some of these, we had a turnover early and they get a quick play to the net, deflection — stoppable puck, but shouldn't have been turned over and then you have a blocked shot. Those are things that, to me, is a bit of a lack of focus, knowing where to go with the puck before you get it. That's the mark of good teams, good players that are on their toes and it looked like we were way too slow reacting and not set on our toes and more on our heels.”

Even with Hampus Lindholm and Josh Brown’s arrival to Boston’s blue-line corps more than a week ago, Clifton managed to avoid the lineup squeeze that comes with reinforcements on the depth chart.

With Clifton making decisive plays with the puck (and even contributing on the scoresheet with three points in two games against Montreal and Tampa Bay), the Quinnipiac product was spared from a night on the ninth floor — with Mike Reilly standing as the odd man out of Boston’s defensive rotation over the past week.  

But that certainly doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.

Granted, considering Reilly’s evident talent as a puck-moving weapon and Brown’s physical snarl that the B’s have yet to harness in a game so far, Cassidy had always envisioned that both skaters were going to get their reps in a contest at some point this week.

But Tuesday’s performance from Clifton sure made things a bit easier when it comes to the justification for a lineup switcheroo. 

“There’ll be some changes Thursday,” Cassidy said. “There has to be. There were some guys tonight where their play wasn’t good enough. That’s what makes your team better, internal competition. We may have done it anyway. This wasn’t the end all be all, but this certainly accelerated the process.”

Internal competition worked its magic when it came to drawing the best out of Clifton’s game in those games against the Habs and Bolts. And be it Brown’s added thump or Reilly’s expected resolve after being on the wrong side of the numbers game with the starting lineup, the Bruins could have a good problem on their hands when it comes to letting the best talent rise to the surface with its eventual six-man unit on defense.

But for as much as Clifton’s performance on Tuesday was a disappointing regression from a third-pairing/depth option — Brandon Carlo’s lackluster showing deserves a bit more of a stern examination. 

Even though Cassidy has stressed that the Bruins want to give a potential second-pairing tandem of Carlo and Lindholm an extended look in order to assess if equilibrium can be achieved in that top-four unit, the returns on Tuesday were far from encouraging. 

In the 8:31 of 5v5 ice time that the Lindholm-Carlo pairing logged against Toronto, the Leafs outscored Boston, 1-0, and held a commanding 13-2 edge in shot attempts. Far from ideal, especially considering that the duo had 75 percent of their 5v5 faceoffs in the offensive zone.

(For those keeping track, Lindholm with Charlie McAvoy continues to impress — with the Bruins outscoring Toronto, 1-0, and holding a 4-2 edge in shot attempts during their 5:10 of 5v5 ice time together on Tuesday).

But just about every blueliner that was slotted into that second pairing with Carlo labored. By the end of the evening, the Maple Leafs boasted an absurd 17-3 edge in shot attempts during Carlo’s 13:18 of 5v5 reps.

For now, the underlying numbers and basic eye test map out that Carlo and Matt Grzelcyk is likely the best partnership on the second pair. But a game like this from a D-man tasked with serving as a shutdown presence on your club should present plenty of concern.

"There's fast teams in this league - we just got to do a better job taking care of the puck,” McAvoy said. “Regardless of what a team's makeup is, we always kind of look at ourselves and it's more about us than it is about them. ... You can't give a team like that opportunities.” 

If the Bruins indeed focus more internally on these self-inflicted miscues, a night like Tuesday might be a bit easier to process. If Boston continues to adhere to the strengths of its game that carried the club through this recent 14-2-1 surge, perhaps a stinker like this one can be cast aside as just a poor night at the office.

But if expected stalwarts like Carlo continue to short-circuit against teams like Toronto, Boston might have even more hurdles to face in the coming weeks when it comes to pinning down the best combination of blueliners on this current roster. 

“You hope it’s a one-off. We’ve been going pretty well. … It’s a loss. A home loss,” Cassidy said. “They were clearly better than us. (A loss) to a team we may see down the road. It’s disappointing in that regard. We’ll go back to work tomorrow. Let’s see how we respond Thursday. But yeah it’s disappointing we weren’t better.”

Stats and graphs via Natural Stat Trick.