Give the Boston Bruins credit: they’ve been fairly consistent in their play on the ice since the NHL All-Star break.
The Bruins have elevated their game and played well against playoff-level competition just like they have all season, but they have also failed to show up on a number of nights recently while playing teams that are playing out the string at this point. The Blues are technically still in it, of course, sitting six points behind the Vegas Golden Knights for a wild card spot, but they are currently not in the playoff structure while soundly outperforming the Bruins in a 5-1 game at TD Garden on Monday night.
Boston trailed by a pair of goals after the opening period and never showed urgency, emotion or anything remotely approaching the desperation that St. Louis was playing with while poking holes in the B’s defense.
“You have nights like this when the puck doesn’t go your way. You don’t have puck luck. It happens,” said Jim Montgomery. “We have 91 points. We’re a good hockey team. We weren’t good tonight.
“I didn’t like our start. I don’t think we had the intensity that’s required in this league to start games on time. The execution, they executed their 5-on-3, we didn’t execute on our power play that we got, especially in the first. I thought their desperation defensively was a little higher than ours.”
While what Montgomery is saying is true about the puck luck, the Bruins also gave up five goals to the Blues. That is not ever going to be a winning level of play for the Black and Gold regardless of spewed hockey cliches like “puck luck” or “getting the bounces” in a game where they were just flat at both ends of the ice.
Certainly, the discipline wasn’t there either as the Bruins took three penalties in the first period that led to a Blues power play goal that had Boston trailing by a pair of scores going into the first intermission. One Dorchester native Kevin Hayes scored early in the second period and then paid tribute to his late brother Jimmy by pointing to the sky after he scored, it was all over for the Black and Gold on a night where they never really even got started.
Since the NHL All-Star break the Bruins have dropped games to Calgary, Washington, Seattle, the Islanders and now the Blues, and have been outscored by an aggregate of 24-7 in those defeats to playoff also rans. To their credit, they did take care of business against a Pittsburgh Penguins this weekend who were sellers at the deadline and they at least pushed the Kings to overtime before losing a few weeks ago.
But the lack of late-season focus and engagement in a number of games against the NHL’s lesser teams has been obvious to watch. It reinforces the notion that the Bruins aren’t talented enough, deep enough or without enough weaknesses to simply go through the motions and expect to beat anybody at the NHL level.
It’s something that Brad Marchand correctly surmised while talking about the Boston Bruins a couple of weeks ago while they were amidst a stretch of four quality efforts in a row against higher-profile teams like the Maple Leafs, Oilers and Penguins.
“We had a tough start. It’s definitely an area that we need to be better in. This time of year, teams really come out hard a lot and we need to do the same,” said Brad Marchand, who finished with one shot on net in 17:57 of ice time but also had three hits and four takeaways in a pretty active effort. “I don’t think we were engaged enough. [The fourth line] guys were creating all night long and we didn’t have enough guys that were following suit.
“It’s one of those things where we need to continue to play the right way and make sure that we’re good every night. That’s what the good teams do. They are tough to play against every single night and we were not that tonight.”
The lone bright spot alluded to by the B’s captain was the play of the fourth line, with big winger Justin Brazeau scoring a goal down low that was eventually wiped off the board by an offsides coach’s challenge from St. Louis.
Justin Brazeau goes to work down low and is rewarded with one of the wildest bounces imaginable. Goal is under review... pic.twitter.com/xQQxqSfblS
— Spoked Z (@SpokedZ) March 12, 2024
Brazeau finished with two shot attempts and four hits in 13:18 of ice time, and Jesper Boqvist and Jakub Lauko also chipped in with energy and physicality while giving the Blues everything they could handle. One could envision that fourth line group being effective in the playoffs, particularly when an experienced bruiser like Pat Maroon gets entered into the mix as well once he’s fully recovered from early February back surgery.
But on Monday night the Bruins didn’t post any offense until David Pastrnak scored his 41st goal of the season a couple of minutes into the third, and the B’s were down by a 4-1 score on a night when they showed little in the way of effort or intensity. Mason Lohrei finished with a minus-3 while struggling defensively and Kevin Shattenkirk once again had a tough night in his own end as well, a trend that may see freshly acquired D-man Andrew Peeke entering the Boston lineup sooner rather than later.
“It wasn’t good enough. You have start playing these games from the beginning. I think we had some good looks that we couldn’t capitalize on too and we just need to build on that for the next game,” said Pavel Zacha, who kept his offensive hot streak going with an assist on Pastrnak’s goal that gives him five goals and eight points in his last five games. “You can’t afford to play like that, especially after the last few games that we had played. It was kind of a letdown for us to play like that, so we just have to rebuild for the next game.”
The Bruins showed exactly what they could do while holding the high-powered Leafs, Oilers and Penguins to one regulation goal in four straight well-played games over the last couple of weeks, but they also showed on Monday night against St. Louis what happens when they ease their foot off the gas pedal.
Chalk it up as another lesson to the Black and Gold that they just aren’t talented enough to win in the NHL with anything less than maximum effort, even against hockey clubs well below them in the standings.