If the Bruins end up missing the Stanley Cup playoffs this season, it will most assuredly be because the month of January did them in.
Though it’s still got almost two weeks to go, a lousy month for the Black and Gold got a little worse on Saturday as they dropped a 6-5 overtime decision to the Ottawa Senators at the Canadian Tire Centre. While collecting just the loser point in the divisional game, the B’s dropped out of the wild card playoff spot and were bypassed by a Senators team that still holds two games in hand against Boston.
The way in which they lost was part of the story too, as the Bruins blew a two-goal lead in the third period with three minutes to play while allowing a pair of 6-on-5 goals after Ottawa pulled their goaltender. First, it was Elias Lindholm failing to clear a puck while the Bruins were trapped in their own end, and it eventually led to Nick Jensen scoring. Then it was Josh Norris potting his second goal of the game on a one-timer with just 12 seconds left in regulation to push it to overtime.
And then the Bruins failed to find a way in overtime and the shootout while captain Brad Marchand simply watched and was held out of the extra session due to a coach’s decision, per Joe Sacco. Marchand, by the way, is third all-time in NHL history all-time with 21 OT game-winners behind only Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby.
🎥 Coach Sacco and the #NHLBruins react following Saturday's 6-5 shootout loss to the Senators in Ottawa.
— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) January 19, 2025
Full postgame reaction ➡️ https://t.co/pLRCW3UGBJ pic.twitter.com/sdpgubbKkN
If the Bruins had simply found a way to hold on, even in nail-biting fashion, the scrutiny would not be so merciless.
But they didn’t and now everything gets dissected and analyzed, and the Bruins do not look good under the hood.
“Just spending time in your own zone, the inability to get the puck out and then they capitalized on it,” said Sacco to NESN following the defeat. “We just have to be able to close out games in pressure situations like that and to execute better.
“We just have to be better defending that lead when it’s 6-5…I don’t really know what else to say. You can’t give up slot chances like that. Give them credit, they were hungry. But you can’t give up slot chances like that. We have guys out there where we have to make sure we get the puck out of our zone.”
But instead, they gave away two points a Senators team jousting with them for one of the last playoff spots and came away with only one for themselves after starting the game horribly and ending it just as badly. For a team that hopes to be in the Stanley Cup playoffs at the end of the season, it was another gut check that they failed miserably in a series of them during a season that’s had numerous low points.
Taken as a single game, some of the mistakes would be forgiven or forgotten. But this comes after they gave away at least three points during a six-game losing streak at the beginning of the month, and as they continue to sport a wretched minus-23 goal differential that screams out “not playoff material.”
The shootout loss dropped the B’s to 2-4-2 during the month of January and that’s not going to cut it for a hockey team that’s given themselves zero margin for error. It’s too bad they couldn’t hold on because it had all the markings of a feel-good win with Johnny Beecher snapping a 39-game goal-scoring slump and 29-year-old Vinni Lettieri potting his first goal as a member of the B’s after a career spent bouncing between the AHL and the NHL.
But it feels like every good thing that the Bruins do is cancelled out by some kind of feel-bad failure, or coming up short when it is measuring stick time against a playoff-level team. And it’s feeling more and more like the Ottawa Senators want to be one of those based on the level of nastiness on the ice during Saturday’s game.
“These were big points on the table,” said David Pastrnak. “The last couple of games it’s too many shots from inside the house. You need to protect the slot and block more shots. Honestly, we didn’t deserve to win [playing the way we did] being up two goals. We were defending too much and in our zone too much.”
Even on their current three-game point streak they have been outshot by a margin of 132-70 by the Lightning, Panthers and Senators over the course of the last three games.
Sure, it speaks well to Jeremy Swayman sporting a .924 save percentage over that stretch as he’s stopped 122 of the 132 shots fired at him, but it also speaks to a Bruins team that’s currently under siege while missing their two best defensemen in Charlie McAvoy and Hampus Lindholm.
The Bruins are very clearly going to be in a dog fight for a simple wild card spot for the final three months of the regular season, and each point lost becomes an added degree of difficulty for the ultimate job of earning a playoff berth.
It’s something that Bruins CEO Charlie Jacobs said was paramount, while talking State of the Bruins this week, in terms of the organization’s ultimate goal to win a Stanley Cup.
“I feel everyone’s frustration, and I hear it, too. But, I feel it because, like our fan base, I am also a fan and I support this team. And I believe in our leadership. I know that’s been called into question quite a bit recently.
“Our team, in my opinion, has yet to play its best game. I feel like we’ve got it in our system, we’ve got it in our room, and I hope we can find it. If history is any indication of what we can anticipate, if we look at Don Sweeney’s stewardship and Cam Neely’s stewardship since Don took over in 2015, we made the playoffs eight of 10 years,” said Jacobs at the team’s Black and Gold Gala. “I’m not going to measure success by making the Stanley Cup playoffs. Let’s be very clear about that. Our goal is to win the Stanley Cup. But you can’t win the Stanley Cup if you don’t make the playoffs, and he’s done it for the past eight years, and I hope we do it again this year for our ninth.
“I have faith that they’ll make the right decisions. I don’t have the playbook for that. I have faith that they will make those decisions, though.”
Faith is nice, of course. But getting all-important points in moments of truth during the regular season is ultimately where playoff berths are earned or missed, and the B’s have been on the wrong side of that ledger way too many times this month. It may already be too late based on Boston’s own shortcomings and the Eastern Conference parity that has six non-playoff teams within five points of a wild card spot.
And look out below from top to bottom organizationally if the Bruins don't make the playoffs are spending a lot of free agent money last summer.