Little more than a month ago, a putrid performance on home ice against the Columbus Blue Jackets spurred the Bruins to fire embattled head coach Jim Montgomery.
There won’t be any fallout similar to that after a very uninspired 6-2 loss to the Blue Jackets at Nationwide Arena on Friday night in the first game back from the NHL’s Christmas holiday break, but a few things remain clear about this Black and Gold club after another ugly loss.
For all the resilient performances and the solid 11-5-1 record that the B’s have built up under Joe Sacco behind strong defense and improved special teams, there are still some flaws with this inconsistent group that are going to bite them come playoff time if season-long trends continue for them.
Yes, this Bruins club should be a Stanley Cup playoff team while ensconced within the Atlantic Division playoff structure during the NHL’s holiday break.
But the previously reliable penalty kill continues to haunt the Bruins after they allowed three PP goals to Columbus as things spiraled away from them, and they now sit 25th in the NHL with a leaky 75.4 percent success rate. There were five Bruins players that went without a shot on net, there was a horrendous second-period long change where four B’s skaters went to the bench leaving Brandon Carlo all by himself trying to defend an Adam Fantilli breakaway score and there was zero physicality in terms of pushing back against Columbus.
It simply looked like the B’s weren’t engaged enough on a day when they flew into Columbus on Friday morning – different than the norm – after the holiday break, had a rushed gameday preparation and then faced a Columbus team that knows they’re going to be fighting and scrapping for their postseason lives in the second half of the year.
None of that seemed to inspire the assembled Bruins players into anything resembling a winning level of effort in an NHL game. Continued games like this feel like this season’s Bruins group is an average hockey team and that they won’t have a very long lifespan, like perhaps first round victimhood, when the postseason rolls around.
“We just got away from the game plan. [There was] a lack of execution. I thought we didn’t respect the game plan enough and we didn’t respect how we would win the game tonight with respect to how we need to play,” said Sacco to NESN following the loss. “It wasn’t a good enough effort after the first period for whatever reason.
“We need to correct some of the mistakes we made [in Columbus] and get ready for a quick turnaround.”
The shame of it all was that the Bruins were in a pretty good spot after the opening 20 minutes of play, but the defeat highlighted another problem area for the Bruins. This season’s group consistently exhibits an unwillingness to sometimes fight from things completely devolving into a blowout situation, which is reflected in their poor goal differential (minus-18) for the season despite being in a postseason position.
This Columbus loss was similar to the way things spiraled downward and out-of-control in road losses to Carolina, Dallas and Winnipeg as well, and that is a warning sign that things are not going to go well for Boston once they’re matched up against stronger teams that can exploit them in the playoffs.
“We weren’t winning any battles. They were quicker to the puck. They outbattled us,” admitted Charlie Coyle, who did score his 10th goal of the season in the third period of extended garbage time. “You can’t win many games you are being outworked like that. It was embarrassing. It’s the same layoff for everybody, and they were ready to play, and we weren’t. That’s just unacceptable.
“But the silver lining is that we get another chance to play them again, get another crack at them at home and get a chance to show that we’re the better team on home ice like they did against us in this one.”
The one big difference in Friday night’s failure was that the Bruins finally cobbled together a stinker with Joonas Korpisalo in net. The Finnish netminder had been able to avoid the other games where Jeremy Swayman was victimized by a halfhearted performance in front of him, but this time Korpisalo gave up juicy rebounds, saw disinterred defense in front of him and was hung out to dry by a poor Bruins penalty kill performance against a pretty impressive Columbus power play.
Hulking forward Dmitri Voronkov, in particular, was a problem around the front of the net winning battles and scoring goals on the Columbus man advantage. But six goals on 33 shots for Korpisalo told him that he could have been better as well after a strong body of work as the backup netminder this season in Boston.
“Great special teams for them. I think throughout the game they got a lot of odd-man rushes and that really gave them momentum throughout the game,” said Korpisalo. “All of us, I don’t think we had our A-game today. I think it’s just all of us being better in our overall games. [The holiday break] is the same for everybody else, so that is really no excuse for us. Good thing tomorrow is a new game, so I think it sets up for [Saturday night’s] game a little bit.”
It's some level of encouragement that the Bruins seem motivated to respond on Saturday night at home, but an up-and-down B’s team will show they’ve truly evolved and improved when they don’t have dumpster fire-type losses that they need to respond from in the first place. For right now they continue to slip in a stinker every time it feels like they’re turning the corner, and an ugly, uninspired loss to the Blue Jackets after they limited Washington to 11 shots on net in the last game prior to the holiday break is a great illustration of their erratic performance pattern this season.