Something has got to change for a Boston Bruins team that’s simply floundering since the NHL All Star break.
The Bruins endured their low point of the season on Saturday night as they wriggled their way through a 5-1 loss to the New York Islanders at UBS Arena where at no point did they seem engaged with the NHL hockey game going on around them.
Billerica native Marc McLaughlin was a lone bright spot scoring a goal in his first game back at the NHL level in a couple of seasons, but the defense played soft, mistake-prone hockey and was unable to fend off an Islanders team scrapping and clawing for their playoff lives. In a series of games since the start of February that have served as slaps to the collective face of the Black and Gold, this was the most stupefying to date with little emotion, energy or urgency as the hockey calendar turns to the month of March.
It's little more than a month to the Stanley Cup playoffs and the Bruins look like they need some serious smelling salts and a heater.
“Just that we had to be more emotionally engaged and we needed to have a better response,” said captain Brad Marchand, who addressed the team after a brutal first period that saw them down by a 3-0 score before coughing up another goal just 46 seconds into the second period. “We knew that the first period wasn’t acceptable by our standards, and it bit us in the butt tonight.”
Afterward, the Bruins took accountability for the odious effort, but talk is cheap for a team that’s 4-4-5 since the NHL All-Star break and has allowed three or more goals, including shootout points, in their last 11 games while watching their goals against average team total steadily rise. The Bruins are now seventh in the NHL with a 2.76 goals against average that’s a steep drop from a team that led the league in GAA last season with a pair of goaltenders sharing the Jennings Trophy.
Break it down any way you want, but it simply comes down to the Bruins losing battles in their own end, and getting burned in a system that calls for them to gamble a little more offensively than they traditionally did in the past.
“I think when we have our opportunities to keep the puck out of our defensive zone then we need to do a better job there, but our transition to defense definitely needs to be better,” said Brandon Carlo. “Once it gets in front of the net, we just need to do a better job of boxing out bodies and having all five guys converging more to the net front area.”
The goaltending tandem is still elite for the Black and Gold, and Linus Ullmark was far from the problem on Saturday night. But the defense has been prone to mistakes leading to odd-man rushes all season long, and even more so since Hampus Lindholm went down with injury a couple of weeks ago.
Worse than that, pretty much all of Boston’s best players chose Saturday night to be way, way less than their best at both ends of the ice.
Marchand (minus-2), Charlie Coyle (minus-2) and David Pastrnak (minus-3) were all victimized by Kyle Palmieri, J.G. Pageau and Anders Lee, and Brandon Carlo (minus-2) and Mason Lohrei (minus-3) weren’t any better on the back end. Some might say just toss out the results on a one-off loss for a team destined for the playoffs, but too many of the same defensive shortcomings and too little stiffness on the back end have become a chronic, recurring Boston problem.
When the ice chips weren’t even settled in the first, Palmieri already had a natural hat trick en route to a four-point night, and the Bruins were stuck playing extended garbage time on the Island.
“We just weren’t good enough. We weren’t firm enough,” said Jim Montgomery. “We didn’t start the game on time. It was one of those games where, for whatever reason, we just weren’t very good. Now we need to move on to Toronto and get ready for a team that’s playing very good hockey.
“The quality and quantity of chances that we were allowing early and often [was the biggest concern].”
The question now is just how much of this problem is going to be addressed by the healthy return of Lindholm, and by any potential back-end upgrades transpiring at the trade deadline. Cam Neely mentioned to the Athletic this week that the need for more “stiffness” on the back end was an obvious priority for upgrades prior to the Stanley Cup playoffs.
“Another stiff defender would be good. And you could always use help on offense. Obviously, I like the size of [Justin] Brazeau. That adds an element to the bottom part of our lineup we haven’t had for a while,” said Neely. “[Heaviness is] an element where we can probably play a little more physical than we have. I’m not talking about putting someone in the third row. But just creating a little bit more anxiety.”
“What do we need? How do we get it? And what does it cost us? Then you have to weigh that all out. You have your wish list. You rank certain areas you’d like to improve upon. But sometimes it’s not possible to do it. Then you try to find another area to improve upon.”
Would Noah Hanifin address all of Boston’s weaknesses and make them a more legitimate Cup contender given all the moving parts it would take salary cap-wise and trade asset-wise? Would a role-playing defenseman with a cheaper price tag like Nick Seeler or Joel Edmundson adequately address a season-long problem area when it comes to closing out third-period leads and holding off teams when they exert a push?
These are not easy questions to answer with the NHL trade deadline looming just ahead and the Bruins clearly in need of help while treading water after the All-Star break. But they’d better find answers quickly as they can’t keep going on like the hapless team that’s been treading water for a month now.
ONE-TIMERS
1. It was good to hear Boston Bruins GM Don Sweeney also acknowledge on NESN earlier this week that physicality and heaviness is an area where the B’s need some help after missing the services of Milan Lucic for obvious reasons this season. “We’ve always put forth that we want to be a highly competitive team,” said Sweeney. “There’s the physical part of the game that we’re lacking at times…maybe we’d like to try and address that. We’ve tried to use our depth throughout the organization. A lot of guys have done a tremendous job in that regard, but we may have to look to the outside to find some.”
2. Young Rangers heavyweight Matt Rempe is making everybody talk right now as a new NHL heavyweight who’s taking on all challengers while making an impact with the New York Rangers. This is why I think the NHL will never truly get away from the fighting aspect as it’s something diehard fans love, particularly when it comes along with a guy that can actually play the game a little bit. Rempe and Ryan Reaves dropping them at center ice on Saturday night for Hockey Night in Canada was the latest installment for a player that’s bringing something special to the Rangers right now.
The @NHL_on_TNT panel discusses the Reaves-Rempe scrap, and the start to the Rangers' rookie's career 🎙️ pic.twitter.com/TDpG7WxIyN
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) March 3, 2024
3. Solid move by the New Jersey Devils to acquire Colorado lunch pail forward Kurtis MacDermid for a seventh-round pick and a Russian prospect that’s currently playing over in the KHL. That feels like the kind of rugged, tough forward that the Bruins might have been looking for as a fourth-line option, the kind of guy that’s gone toe-to-toe with tough guys like Milan Lucic in the past. Take that one off the board with not too many options that fill that kind of heavy, tough customer job description.
4. One player that’s really struggled over the last month during Boston’s post-All Star break blues? It’s Brad Marchand with two goals in 12 games during the month of February along with a minus-4 rating, and then a zero-point, minus-2 performance in Saturday night’s Isles loss during the month of March. Perhaps the big minutes the 35-year-old has carried all season are beginning to catch up to him after averaging 19:28 of ice time in February? That’s one thing to watch as Jim Montgomery has a tendency to really ride his top horses hard, and that may be a factor in some of the third-period struggles to close out games for the B’s this season. It’s also very clearly something to watch for Boston’s best players down the stretch after shouldering a heavy regular season load this season.
5. I don’t know who was responsible for getting me a cameo on the Boston Bruins TikTok account, but I want to thank them for giving me a lot of street cred with the kids these days.
You made an appearance on the Bruins TikTok page pic.twitter.com/rElExdWgxd
— Alex G (@Alex_Gelsomino) February 29, 2024
I feel like Steve Buscemi in the meme that everybody constantly uses on twitter/X when an “old” like me uses a word or phrase meant for the twentysomethings. How Do You Do, Fellow Kids!