Perfection proving to be unsustainable model for Bruins
A lot of people who cover sports for a living will try tell you that they’re unbiased and are simply doing the job assigned to them by their editor. Truth be told, I think the vast majority of these people are liars. But here’s the thing: I’m not unbiased. I’m absolutely not unbiased when it comes to this Bruins team.
In fact, I’m desperate for a reason to believe in what this team can do if they sneak into the postseason. It’s not because I grew up with Bruins pendants and pucks on my wall, and ate the Bruins cereal with Billy Guerin and Jason Allison on the box for breakfast every morning. No. I just love playoff hockey in Boston. It’s an energy unlike any other, and it makes the 82-game grind worth it. It’s also been nine years since I last experienced a spring without Bruins playoff hockey, and all my friends I hung out back then have gotten married and had kids, so I truthfully have no idea what I’d do with that free time.
But losses like the one suffered by the Bruins in New York City on Wednesday night are just the latest example as to why it’s getting harder and harder to see the pathway for this year’s team.
On the second leg of a back-to-back, the Bruins hung in there against an equally desperate Rangers club about as well as you could have hoped. Their offense is their offense, and that’s not changing, but the Bruins ‘dug in deep’ like their did the night before and had a fantastic pair of successful penalty kills in the middle frame. They then built on that with two goals in 16 seconds.
The Rangers battled back to tie things in the third period, but with 10 minutes left in a 2-2 game, the Bruins were going to the power play and with a chance to by all means win the game. But instead of seizing that opportunity, the Bruins let a single mistake pave the way to a Chris Kreider shorthanded strike that powered the Rangers to a comeback victory over Boston.
And honestly, it didn’t take much for it to crumble right in front of the Bruins.
With Matt Poitras possessing the puck along the wall to the left of the Rangers’ Igor Shesterkin, the crafty Boston pivot attempted to feed the puck to the white-hot Morgan Geekie for a one-time blast. Geekie flubbed the puck ever so slightly, though, and the Rangers pounced the puck to catch the Bruins flat-footed going the other way. And it was Kreider whose think-fast-legs turned what looked like a one-on-one into a two-on-one and simply stunned the Bruins’ Joonas Korpisalo the other way.
Again, it wasn’t much, but it doesn’t take much to put the Bruins in a hole this season.
And this is the thing we have consistently come back to with this year’s Bruins team: Their margins have always been small, and it feels like they are getting smaller with each passing loss. Wednesday night came with an opportunity for the Bruins to move back into a playoff spot. That did not happen, and they will instead begin and end Thursday on the outside looking in. The Bruins also have a games played disadvantage working against them in a significant way. And depending on what happens in Tampa Bay-Ottawa and Utah-Columbus on Thursday night, the Bruins could drop down to 10th in the conference or find themselves chasing an even greater deficit with the Lightning and Sens.
Expecting the Bruins to go undefeated between now and Game 82 would be straight-up deranged behavior. But the spot the Bruins have worked themselves into now requires near-perfection on a nightly basis, and the sustainability of such a model has simply become impossible to truly believe in.
Here are some other thoughts, notes, and takeaways from a 3-2 loss to the Rangers…
Pastrnak remains Boston’s top (only?) threat
The NHL’s best player in January, David Pastrnak has shown no signs of slowing down in February. Already on the board with five points through two games, Pastrnak took his act to New York City on Wednesday and fired home a goal to extend his own point streak. And once again, Pastrnak was pretty much the only thing that the Bruins had going in this game, as they broke even in shots (7-7) and outscored the Rangers 1-0 during Pastrnak’s 16 minutes of five-on-five time on ice. In 30 minutes of five-on-five play with him on the bench, the Bruins were outshot 12-5 and outscored 2-1.
It truly feels like Pastrnak understands the spot that the B’s are in right now, and is doing everything he can to will the team to victory. It’s going to take a superhuman effort every night, but one thing I sneaky loved about Pastrnak’s night was his unhappiness. After the game, Pastrnak was asked about his own point streak, but before the reporter could even finish his question, Pastrnak shot it down and said he was not going to be talking about that. Not that this was something that I even doubted, but he knows the personal stats are meaningless right now. Love that mindset from one of your leaders.
Why Brad Marchand was unhappy with tough call
Bruins captain Brad Marchand knows he’s not going to get the benefit of the doubt most nights. It is what it is, and nothing is ever really going to change that. So it wasn’t the call against him for roughing the Rangers’ Igor Shesterkin that bugged Marchand, but the fact that the scrum ended with his helmet ripped off his head by a Ranger and without a matching minor thrown New York’s way.
“I was just questioning him about when a guy pulls your helmet off, it’s an automatic penalty,” Marchand said after the loss. “So, I was just curious why they didn’t call it when it’s automatic.”
To Marchand’s point, it is automatic. But, for some reason, it was not this time around and the Rangers were given a 5-on-4 advantage that ultimately ended with a Vinny Trocheck goal scored a second after Marchand’s penalty had officially expired and the Boston penalty box door opened.
Finding a silver lining up front
The Bruins are starving for more offense below the Pastrnak line, and it appears that the club is finally getting something closer to what they paid for with Elias Lindholm.
On the board with the second goal of the evening, Lindholm has now recorded two goals and five points in his last five games overall. In fact, this has been basically a month-long heater for Lindholm, with the Swedish center recording three goals and nine points in his last 12 outings going back to Jan. 11.
If the Bruins can get something like that out of Lindholm all the time, that’s a 60-point pace over an 82-game season, which is what the Bruins need out of Lindholm (at the very least) if he’s going to be a top-six center for this team. Comfort is a big part of this for Lindholm, really, and if he’s finally settled in and comfortable, perhaps this can and will be the new norm for the first-year Bruin.
Everything else
– If you feel like it’s been a tough year for the Bruins’ Brandon Carlo, you’re not wrong. After posting a plus-44 in 2022-23 and plus-23 in 2023-24, Carlo currently boasts a plus-2 rating through 55 games, and took a minus on Wednesday night when J.T. Miller pressured him into a turnover on the way to an Artemi Panarin goal for the Blueshirts. But, let’s dive beyond the plus-minus for a moment.
Carlo is one of 101 defensemen to log at least 800 five-on-five minutes this season. Among that group of 101, Carlo’s on-ice goals against per 60 (2.50) is the 38th-highest rate. Carlo has also been on the ice for 11.63 high-danger chances against per 60, which is the 21st-worst rate among that group of 101. Of course, Carlo’s deployment as a defensive-zone stalwart has a lot to do with those numbers, but it feels like there’s been some definite regression in terms of his ability to handle it all.
To be honest, I think this is a guy who desperately misses having Hampus Lindholm to his left.
– It’s tough to blame him on a night where the offense musters just 17 shots at the other end, but Wednesday saw Korpisalo take the loss behind a 19-of-22 performance. This was Korpisalo’s sixth start with an in-game save percentage under .870, and the Bruins have lost all six of those games. Again, this goes well beyond Korpisalo (it’s almost completely at the other end), but if he’s not giving you enough to power through that, then that’s a lot of money tied up in the backup goalie spot.
– MSG has an extremely underrated in-game playlist.
– The Bruins might have to take a page from the Rangers’ playbook at some point this season. Yeah, sure, Kappo Kakko was one of their top picks, but they lost faith in him. So they moved him and acquired Will Borgen in the process. They’ve since extended Borgen and he’s looked like a solid fit in their top four. They also went out and acquired a tough-as-nails competitor in J.T. Miller. The veteran Miller obviously had some prior experience with the Rangers, which helps, but he’s stepped right in and brought a stern and hyper-focused voice to that locker room. I firmly believe that the Bruins want to remain more of a ‘win now’ team than a ‘retooling’ team, and to do that, you’re gonna have to make a tough call on players you at one point loved and you’re gonna have to truly embrace the idea of shaking up your locker room with a high-octane or potentially spicy ingredient. That’s something that Bruins general manager Don Sweeney has always had a natural reluctance to doing, for one reason or another.
