The Boston Bruins were in full control of their first-round playoff series while up 3-to-1 headed into Tuesday night’s Game 5 on home ice at TD Garden after winning two games on the road in Toronto.
Inexplicably, the Bruins decided to mess with the winning formula and make a couple of lineup changes that at least partially played into a 2-1 overtime loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs in a Game 5 that will send the series back to Toronto. The Bruins copped to a lack of emotion and urgency in Tuesday night’s game with a chance to eliminate the Leafs in a playoff match where, truth be told, goalie Jeremy Swayman was their best player, and it wasn’t a close contest for second place.
"We never really got it together throughout the game. We need to be better there. We needed better urgency,” admitted Brad Marchand. “We knew they'd come and be prepared, so we needed to be better. It is what it is. We've got to look at what we can better at and get ready for the next one.
“The hardest one to get is that last one and they left it all out there. We needed to be better. That’s all it is. A little more urgency that wasn’t there. Now we have another opportunity to be prepared and be better.”
Jim Montgomery played coy about possibly changing things up on Tuesday morning while it looked like at morning skate like either Derek Forbort or Matt Grzelcyk was going in for Kevin Shattenkirk, and that Justin Brazeau was a possibility as well.
"Might be some lineup changes,” said Montgomery after morning skate. “Might be exact same lineup [as Game 4].”
In hindsight, it feels like Montgomery and the Bruins probably would have been better off going with the “exact same lineup” for Tuesday night’s home playoff tilt.
In reality, Montgomery scratched Shattenkirk in favor of Grzelcyk and also sat down Johnny Beecher in favor of the bigger, slower Brazeau, who hadn’t played in a game in almost a month after getting hurt back on April 2 against Nashville. Grzelcyk was rusty and mistake-prone in the first period with three glaring turnovers in his first couple of shifts against Toronto and had a giveaway that eventually led to Brandon Carlo icing the puck.
The Carlo icing led to a defensive zone faceoff loss for Trent Frederic to Max Domi that opened things up for the Jake McCabe point blast that beat Jeremy Swayman for Toronto’s only regulation score.
But that wasn’t even the worst part.
Grzelcyk was again on the receiving end in the defensive zone in overtime when John Tavares bull-rushed him to the net before hitting the post. The puck then bounced right to Matthew Knies in the slot as he buried the game-winner to extend Toronto’s life and send the series back up to Canada for Game 6.
SCORES SCORES SCORES MATTHEW KNIES FROM JOHN TAVARES
— Rink Rat Report (@RinkRatReport) May 1, 2024
THE LEAFS LIVE TO SEE ANOTHER DAY pic.twitter.com/l3jFHJzkyw
Perhaps an even bigger issue for the Black and Gold was how Shattenkirk’s absence also fundamentally changed Boston’s power play back to the top-heavy unit of Charlie McAvoy, Brad Marchand, David Pastrnak, Jake DeBrusk and Charlie Coyle that struggled mightily at the end of the regular season. The Bruins had one power play and exactly one shot on net during that man advantage while exerting zero pressure on a Maple Leafs penalty kill that’s been horrendous in the playoff series.
The other lineup issue was Boston’s dreadful performance in the faceoff circle without Beecher, who leads the Bruins with a 54.8 winning percentage on draws in the playoffs thus far. Sure, he was 1-for-7 on faceoffs and struggled a bit in Boston’s Game 4 win against the Maple Leafs, but they were downright awful without him in Game 5. The Bruins lost 16-of-20 faceoffs in the first period and finished at 40 percent while winning a paltry 21-of-53 faceoffs while Domi finished 12-for-14 on the draw.
Montgomery took issue with any question as to whether altering the lineup played into the disjointed effort in Game 5 when asked about it.
“No. I don’t,” said Montgomery when asked if the changes played into the sluggish start. “We made three changes before Game 3, so I don’t think changing personnel [played into an off game]. We’ll have to reevaluate it, see how everybody did, review the film and see if we’re going to make different changes this time.
“We weren’t good enough. Simple as that. Toronto came out ready to play, they took it to us, and we weren’t ready to match their desperation.”
While what Montgomery is saying is technically true, the Bruins were coming off a loss headed into Game 3 when they made those lineup changes that he mentioned to the media. In this instance the Bruins had won two games in a row in Toronto and had the Leafs on the ropes while bickering with each other on the bench.
It felt like the changes messed with a winning formula that wasn’t broken for the Black and Gold, and that’s always a touchy subject to change things up when all the momentum was going Boston’s way in the series. There's also the simple truth that the Bruins only scored one goal in the game and had a ghastly first period, so there plenty of issues to go around offensively as well as any lineup continuity problems.
Now Montgomery is in a tough spot where he needs to decide whether he should stick with whatever he saw as the reasoning to insert Grzelcyk and Brazeau into the series or try something as simple as just going to back to Shattenkirk and Beecher after that playoff lineup seemed to be working well together.
At this point, though, the second-guessing of Montgomery’s choices are legitimate and will be magnified if the playoff series continues to turn away from Boston as it did last spring against the Florida Panthers. The Bruins still have a golden chance on Thursday night to eliminate the Maple Leafs and end any talk about this playoff series beginning to run parallel with last spring against Florida.
But if they don’t you can bet this Game 5 will again be looked at as a pivotal turning point just like a Game 5 home loss to the Panthers last season ultimately doomed them to a painful first round exit.