It’s perhaps inevitable that there was some defensive slippage for the Boston Bruins as they desperately search for goals and just a little bit more offense.
It happened at a difficult time as the Bruins allowed six goals, including a hat trick to Matthew Knies, to the high-powered Maple Leafs in a 6-4 loss to Toronto at the Scotiabank Arena on Saturday night. Knies did a lot of his damage from the slot area and near the front of the net and got there way too easily against many of Boston’s best defensemen and their top forwards with Elias Lindholm, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak all left lacking in defensive zone slot coverage.
“It was too easy for them,” admitted Pastrnak. “We didn’t do enough to prevent [Toronto from scoring]. We talk about keeping the puck out of the net, but unfortunately, we had a tough time breaking the puck out, they had a good forecheck and the ‘D’ had a tough time breaking it out and forwards, like myself, didn’t do a good enough job protecting the slot.
“Those are the two major things that were the takeaways from this game. That’s why they won.”
The 22-year-old Knies, by the way, is on an entry-level contract making $925,000 and has the same amount of goal production as Pastrnak, who also had a pair of goals while the Bruins kept it close in an admittedly entertaining hockey game with a whole lot of offense in the third period.
MATTHEW. KNIES. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!!! pic.twitter.com/0i0tu73Ts8
— Toronto Maple Leafs (@MapleLeafs) January 5, 2025
Clearly it was too much offense for Bruins head coach Joe Sacco’s liking, however, as it came at the expense of the customary grinding defensive effort that’s usually been present under the interim head coach.
“We didn’t do a good enough job tonight. We were not hard enough in certain areas. Give Toronto credit,” said Sacco. “They played hard, particularly below the tops of the circles. We knew before the game it was going to be like that and we just need to be harder to play against down low.
“When you get three or four [goals], you hope to come away with at least a point and that obviously didn’t happen tonight.”
If there is good news to be mined from the latest loss, it’s that Pastrnak exploded for a pair of goals – and has moved back into a tie with Brad Marchand for the team lead with 15 goals on the season -- and Trent Frederic broke out for a score during a season where offense has been difficult to come by for him.
It felt like it might be Boston’s night when Pastrnak picked the pocket of John Tavares and scored on a beautiful top corner shot in the third period, but instead became part of a wasted effort where No. 88 finished with a whopping 11 shot attempts and a rough minus-4 in 21:37 of ice time.
Truthfully, the Bruins could have taken points in each of the three road losses over the last week, but they couldn’t muster enough in any of the games and instead got a big, fat zero points out of three good-but-not-good-enough NHL efforts.
“Hopefully [the goal-scoring] encourages guys and gives the guys some confidence, myself included that we can get some more goals and help this team out,” said Frederic, who broke through for his sixth goal of the season off a nice pass from Charlie McAvoy.
The good news is that the Bruins are still in the Atlantic Division playoff structure despite losing all three games in regulation on the road trip with limp offensive performances against Washington and New York, and then the frustrating out-of-character loss to the Maple Leafs where they came up just a little short in the end. The bottom line for Boston is that they couldn’t contain Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews and Knies throughout the game with Knies finishing the game with three goals, five points and a blistering plus-6 capped off by a Matthews empty netter that iced things in the final seconds.
The real issue for the Bruins is failing to get points in any of these games while teams like the Tampa Bay Lightning (five games in hand) and Ottawa Senators (three games in hand) are trailing them with a significant number of games in hand. Things are setting up for a second half of the season where the Black and Gold are holding off these other teams hungry for the playoffs, and the Bruins continue to struggle with the defensive, hard-to-play-against identity that Sacco is trying to coax out of a hockey team not always up for the challenge.
“Keeping the puck out of our net is our No. 1 priority and we didn’t do a good enough job of that,” lamented Sacco to NESN after the game. “It’s 2-2 in the third, two breakdowns and not hard enough coverage [in the defensive zone] and they capitalized.”
The good news for the struggling Bruins is that they will be right back at it on Sunday within the friendly confines of TD Garden, and they’ll be up against a New York Islanders team that’s in the mix for a wild card playoff spot. So this will be an important game for both teams and the Bruins don’t have the luxury of taking it easy after fumbling away all their chances to take salvage points in the three-game road trip.
Instead, the Bruins are in a situation where every game is vitally important and the focus, execution and emotional investment need to be there for obviously the results, but even more so in keeping to the playing style that’s allowed them to taste some pretty modest success this season.
