The Boston Bruins are too experienced and have been through NHL regular season stretch runs far too often to pound the panic button right now.
That certainly isn’t going to happen even as the B’s were knocked out of first place in the Atlantic Division for the first time in months after dropping their third straight home game, a 4-1 loss to the Seattle Kraken at TD Garden on Thursday night.
The Florida Panthers and Bruins are now tied with 74 points apiece, but the Panthers have bypassed Boston by virtue of their 30 regulation wins while riding a hot stretch where they’ve captured four games in a row coming out of the NHL All-Star break.
The @FlaPanthers (35-15-4, 74 points) defeated the Sabres and moved past the Bruins (32-12-10, 74 points) into first place in the Eastern Conference standings.#NHLStats: https://t.co/KwliX8vmXv pic.twitter.com/g45HnaKKih
— NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) February 16, 2024
The sputtering Bruins, by comparison, have dropped four out of five games and three in a row despite outshooting the Kraken by a 37-26 margin in a loss marked by North Andover native Joey Daccord’s 36 saves and South Shore phenom Matty Beniers putting together a three-point night in front of his friends and family.
Jim Montgomery had little issues with the B’s effort or urgency, but the game came down to a couple of misplays by Brandon Carlo and Parker Wotherspoon at the offensive blue line that devolved into odd-man rush goals for Seattle going the other way.
The game-winning goal was a simple case of Carlo catching an edge and falling down at the offensive line with Beniers applying some pressure. The insurance score was a Wotherspoon shot getting blocked by Alex Wennberg, who quickly banked a pass ahead to a speeding Beniers as Wotherspoon was hung out to dry after failing to get the puck through at the offensive blue line.
SEATTLE KRAKEN
— 𝘿𝙖𝙫𝙮 𝙅𝙤𝙣𝙚𝙨' 𝙇𝙤𝙘𝙠𝙚𝙧 𝙍𝙤𝙤𝙢 (@DavyJonesLR) February 16, 2024
GOAL!!!!
Tough break for Boston when Brandon Carlo falls and it goes the other way and Eeli Tolvanen rips it home and the Kraken take the lead!
2-1
2:25
2nd pic.twitter.com/zksIacc46K
"I think so. I might need to take some skating lessons tomorrow, but those things happen," said Carlo. "Me feeling at the blue line kind of changed the momentum, which is unfortunate timing. But those things happen during the course of a game, You just need to respond and continue with the game."
Wotherspoon has been solid this season as a long-term AHL callup from Providence, but that was a play where some of his NHL limitations came to light against a Seattle team waiting for those kinds of mistakes. That’s not insignificant with the NHL trade deadline weeks away and the Bruins pretty clearly in need of more NHL-caliber depth, heaviness and physicality on the back end
“The one area that we need to continue to improve on and it’s part of our process, is winning the odd man rush battle,” said Montgomery. “We’re not winning that consistently. I think it’s incumbent on me to keep talking about proper positioning and not running out of positioning, and not getting impatient especially in the offensive zone.
“It seems like almost all the odd man rushes that come against us come from not being patient in the offensive zone, whether it’s defensemen or forwards not replacing defensemen. That seems to be the case most times for us.”
None of that would matter, of course, if the Bruins had been able to capitalize on a slew of good scoring chances around the net that either hit the post (a Charlie Coyle backhander), drifted by the net completely (a James van Riemsdyk deflection during an early power play possession) or were smothered by Daccord.
It feels like the Bruins are in one of those “struggle” stretches offensively where goals are hard to come by even as their level of play is adequate.
“Happy with a lot of the parts of our game, but we’re not getting the results right now. Sometimes you go through that during the season. We need to stick together, keep working and keep grinding,” said Montgomery. “We said it after the second [period], it’s going to take some sandpaper goals where it goes off of us and stuff.
“It didn’t happen. We had incredible looks and we hit posts. Those things happen to the offense at times. We just couldn’t finish. It’s easy to stay positive when we’re playing right way. If you keep playing the right way and believe in the process, things are going to turn around. It just usually does.”
The good news is that the last couple of losses, a shootout defeat to the Lightning and Thursday night’s effort vs. the Kraken, were at least games where the Bruins looked like they had proper urgency. This wasn’t a repeat of losses to Calgary and Washington where it felt like the Bruins were still on a beach somewhere at NHL All-Star break rather than prepared for point-hungry teams trying to elbow their way into the playoff picture.
The bad news is that the Bruins are now in a dogfight for the top spot in the division even as they still hold a sizeable 14-point cushion for a playoff spot. The Bruins were saying all the right things after the game, but they had to be fully aware that last postseason’s first-round nemesis, Matthew Tkachuk and the Florida Panthers, are now hitting their stride as they sped past them in the standings.
“We’re definitely focused on ourselves here in the room,” said David Pastrnak, who scored his 34th goal of the season as the only offense for the Black and Gold. “We had this [long] home stretch and we wanted to make the most out of it. We only have a few [games] left, so we have to get the wins Saturday and Monday. [We need to] get back in the winning column.
“Yes, the last two games there have been a lot of positives, but at the end of the day [it doesn’t matter] if you don’t get the ‘dub’. The season is long, so you [sometimes] win games that you shouldn’t win. We just have to regroup here, get the wins and get back in the winning column. Other teams are breathing down our necks.”
There are “other teams”, and then there is the Florida team that passed them in the divisional standings on Thursday with their eighth win in the last 10 games. It’s felt for a long time like any road to the Stanley Cup Final for an Eastern Conference team is going to go through Sunrise, Florida, and Boston dropping into second place was a clear reminder of that after Boston lived the good life for the first four plus months of the regular season.
The Bruins were looking for adversity this season to keep them sharp for the Stanley Cup playoffs, and they are knee deep in it now after another home defeat to an eminently beatable team on Thursday night.