While the Bruins lounge in a very advantageous spot in the Eastern Conference and rode a five-game heater headed into Wednesday night, the flat soda 3-2 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes served as a reminder that there are still regular season lessons to be learned for the Black and Gold.
First off, it was clearly an effort lacking consistency and intensity as evidenced by the blah second period that saw Boston fall behind by two goals and get outshot by a 13-7 margin while consistently finishing second on pucks. That part was perhaps to be expected as there will be duds for every team within the 82-game regular season schedule and this was one of them against a keyed-up Carolina team inspired by playing in front of their proud moms at the Garden.
The moms are all of us pic.twitter.com/hykidYTjSe
— Carolina Hurricanes (@Canes) January 25, 2024
But the more disappointing element was the wasted third period where Brad Marchand pumped in a pair of goals to tie things up.
Jim Montgomery made a great decision to slide Trent Frederic up with Marchand and Charlie Coyle that sparked the two third-period scores as Frederic’s stock continues to rise in a breakout season for the B’s. It looked like Boston was at least going to salvage a point until the Bruins made a basic game management mistake of forgetting the situation, score and time left in the game. Late in the third period of a tied game that appeared headed to overtime, David Pastrnak threw a shot at the net from inside the blue line that kicked out a long rebound from Spencer Martin.
Hampus Lindholm was caught way down low in the offensive zone as Carolina transitioned it quickly out of their end and caught Brandon Carlo flatfooted with a perfect stretch pass to Jordan Martinook. The Hurricanes forward teed one up from the high slot that squirted through Linus Ullmark’s pads for a goal that ended up being Carolina’s game-winner and served as another morsel of adversity for a Bruins team still being taught regular season lessons amidst the wins and hoopla.
The Boston Marty Party pic.twitter.com/yYgDZX0lCq
— Carolina Hurricanes (@Canes) January 25, 2024
“The effort was there in the third, but we needed more of that earlier on,” admitted Coyle. “I think our all-around game wasn’t up to par at the start. We were late on the puck, and we needed to be a little more on our toes and we weren’t.
“That’s one of the things we need to learn from. Time of the game and situation, but you’ve got to grow from that. That’s what we’ll do. We’ll look at some film and we will get better from it.”
To say Montgomery was seething about the third-period gaffe afterward would be an accurate portrayal given how a mistake like that would mean a quick death in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
“The game management at the end of the game was not good and that’s what cost us the game,” said Montgomery. “The defensemen should not be pinching there. It’s 2-2, there’s a shot on net and we need to make sure we keep people in front of us. They ended up with what looked like a 2-on-1 and then it became a breakaway.
“The game management bothers me at the end. You’ve got to know that you’ve done a great job of tying it up 2-2 and we don’t need to force it. Points are valuable. It’s a good lesson going into the playoffs. Yeah, the moment is on our side, it’s 2-2 and the crowd is into it. The Garden is buzzing. But we can’t lose our positioning and give up a breakaway.”
It wasn’t just that single, crucial mistake, of course, as the Bruins power play went 0-for-4 and couldn’t cash in on a Dmitry Orlov penalty late in the third period that gave the Bruins a chance to take hold of the game. Even after scoring a pair of goals, Marchand accepted that accountability following a loss where the Bruins felt like they had left points get squandered away.
“That was a playoff-type game. Those are great for us to go through at this time of year. That’s what we need to do to compete against teams like that. It’s great experience for us with some things we need to learn and take away,” said Marchand. “We knew they had one of the best power plays in the league and we took some stick penalties in the O-zone. That hurt us. We didn’t kill, they went 2-for-3 [on the PP] and it’s tough to compete when our power play didn’t do the job as well.
“The great thing about our team is that everybody wants to take accountability. It’s a teamwide thing. It’s one individual player or one individual mistake that costs a game. There are a lot of different breakdowns on every goal and it’s just us maturing as a team, and understanding the situation we are in every shift. It’s the importance of making simple plays and simple reads. We’re all in it together.”
But Lindholm was an easy scapegoat on Wednesday night amidst a season that hasn’t been as consistently good as last season, even as he appears to be turning his game around with a pretty strong month of January (nine assists and a plus-9 in 12 games this month). The 30-year-old got caught up in the third period moment riding the momentum of a comeback that was cut short as soon as he lost position against a Hurricanes team achingly hungry for points in the second half of the season.
“I’m not teaching well enough, that’s what I learned tonight,” said Montgomery.
The loss to Carolina won’t be memorable for much a month or two from now aside from the valuable late game reminder that good teams don’t beat themselves in close and late situations like Wednesday night. The hope is that lesson will stick when the games really matter to the Black and Gold three months from now.