Bruins have an almost historically bad night vs. Lightning
Saturday night at TD Garden was a straight-up bad night for the Bruins.
Almost historically so, actually.
Held to just 12 shots on goal in a 6-2 loss to the Lightning, Boston’s 12-shot outing was the second-fewest shots landed on goal by a Bruins team since the league began tracking shots in the 1959-60 season. And for the Bruins, it was a mere shot ‘better’ than their franchise low, which was established in an 11-shot loss to the Flyers back on Apr. 18, 1999. For some added context there, Steve Heinze and Sergei Samsonov were the only Bruins to registered multiple shots in that game, so, yeah, it’s been a bit.
But in a night full of frustration, the low point for the Black and Gold came in the second period, which saw the Bruins outshot by a ridiculous 20-0 mark. You could hardly credit the Bruins for trying in the second period, as Boston’s first shot attempt of the second period didn’t come until beyond the halfway point of the frame and the period finished with just three shot attempts compared to Tampa’s 35.
The results were certainly predictable, as the Lightning used that 20-0 shot period to their advantage beyond the looks alone, with three tallies on the Bruins’ Jeremy Swayman in the middle period. Hell, you could argue that Jakub Lauko’s delay of game penalty for sending the puck up and over the glass and into the stands was actually the Black and Gold’s best zone exit of the second period. Seriously.
“It was embarrassing,” Bruins center Elias Lindholm said of the team’s second-period effort. “The compete level was nowhere to be found. Unacceptable all the way around.
“The second period was the worst I’ve seen us play this year.”
To be honest, I’m having a legitimately hard time thinking about a worse period for the Bruins across the board. And a quick scan through the NHL record books makes it even harder. Of course, the Bruins have already had a zero-shot period this season, with the club outshot 12-0 in the third period of what was an overtime loss to the Senators at TD Garden back on Nov. 9. The club even had a zero-shot period against the Sharks back in Oct. 2007, though that shot differential (13-0) seems like a barnburner compared to what unfolded in the second period of Saturday’s loss to Tampa.
Taking a quick look through the history books, the most shots allowed by the Bruins in a single period came back in Nov. 2007 in a head-to-head with the Canadiens, with Montreal landing 25 shots on goal in the third period of a 7-4 final over the Bruins. But the Bruins still managed to land eight shots of their own on goal in that frame, giving them a shot differential of minus-17. Saturday? 20 to zip. SHEESH.
“What you’re trying to do there, obviously, is you’re just trying to survive out there in that moment, but you gotta really dig in,” Bruins interim head coach Joe Sacco said of the second period. “You have to be able to dig in at that point of the game and say to yourself I’m gonna execute here. I’m gonna make a play and get us out of trouble. You have to will yourself out of it, you have to grind it out. We weren’t able to.”
Almost — and potentially actually — historically so.
Here are some other thoughts and notes from a 6-2 loss to the Bolts…
Khusnutdinov strikes again
Keeping in mind that we are working with an extremely small sample size to date, it appears that the Bruins may have actually found something here with the addition of the speedy Marat Khusnutdinov, who found the back of the net for a second straight contest.
Of course, barring the 22-year-old becoming the new Dennis Seidenberg and mastering the art of long-range trickery, Khusnutdinov isn’t going to score on those kind of shots with any sort of regularity. But this is clearly a player who thinks the game with a bit more unpredictability in the attacking zone, which is something the Bruins desperately need more of below their top line.
What’s interesting about the Russian-born Khusnutdinov’s night is that Sacco and the Bruins clearly eased back a bit on sheltering him with offensive-zone minutes and instead gave him more run outside of the attacking zone, and he didn’t drown (at least in comparison to his teammates), with the Bruins outshot just 6-3 in his nearly 16 minutes of five-on-five deployment.
And a little something that won’t get picked up in a box score: Khusnutdinov had a play there in the third period where he attacked a Tampa Bay defenseman with speed at the red line and forced an icing. He clearly surprised the Lightning puck carrier, and turned the nothing play into something positive.
The Bruins will take something like that going their way for a change.
Swayman has one of better outings despite loss
To be abundantly clear here, this has not been a season to remember for Jeremy Swayman. Not even close. But if you were leaving Saturday’s game angry with Swayman, I must say that I fear that you did not grasp anything about the nightmare happening in front of you for 60 minutes.
Just as a standalone belief here, I cannot blame a goaltender when a team is outplayed the way the Bruins were outplayed on Saturday night. It just doesn’t compute for me. If they surrender three goals on three shots, sure, we can talk about it. But when the team is outshot 20-0 in a period and the game is still somewhat within reach after 40 minutes, I gotta tell ‘ya, it’s not on the goalie.
And on Saturday night, the numbers backed that up.
Besides the eye test alone backing up this point with some big-time stops from Swayman, even with the Bruins drowning in their own zone, Saturday finished with a season-high 14 high-danger shots on Swayman. He stopped all but two of them. And with an expected goals against of 4.99, Swayman (four goals allowed on 38 shots faced) beat the expectations by an entire goal, and in what was his highest expected goals against night of the season since the Jan. 11 blitzing down in Sunrise. Overall, this was Swayman’s 12 outing of at least 10 high-danger shots faced, with Swayman making double-digit high-danger saves in nine of those 12 games, too. Do you understand the picture being painted here?
If not, consider this: Since the calendar flipped to 2025, Swayman ranks third in high-danger shots against per 60 among a group of 24 goalies with 1,000 minutes played, at 8.27. Only Montreal’s Sam Montembeault (8.36) and the Blue Jackets’ Elvis Merzlikins (8.71) have faced more high-danger shots per 60 than Swayman over this span. And among that same group of 24, Swayman’s high-danger save percentage sits at .828 following Saturday’s loss, which ranks 11th. Also known as the top-half of the league. Not a horrible figure when you take a look at the rate of high-quality looks thrown his way.
Again, in a night full of not good, horrible, awful nights for the first-year bonafide No. 1 in Boston, this was not one of them. If anything, he kept this one close well later than he probably should have.
Of course, this doesn’t undo what an awful night he had in Ottawa on Thursday night in a game that the club acknowledged as their most important game of the season, but this was indeed a rebound and a step forward (and a considerable one at that), even if it doesn’t look like it in the box score.
(That said, you can still find me out here saying play Joonas Korpisalo more.)
Everything else
– Don Sweeney & Co.’s decision to move on from the likes of Brandon Carlo, and Charlie Coyle, and Brad Marchand were notable beyond the obvious. One thing that immediately stuck out to me: Those are/were three players who were often the first ones at their stalls after an ugly loss to basically take accountability and say what needed to be said into the cameras and tape recorders. Even if you thought it was athlete, BS cliche speak, there was something to be said for the accountability factor. And it was one thing that left you going, “OK, who’s gonna become that guy for this team moving forward?”
Saturday gave us a brief glimpse into who that could be, with both Elias Lindholm and Pavel Zacha downright flaming their own team for what was an ‘unacceptable’ performance.
When asked about the TD Garden crowd straight-up booing this team off the ice at the end of the second period, both Lindholm and Zacha said that the team deserved it given the way they played and what the fans are paying to come watch their games.
For a team with just one player wearing a letter right now, new voices have to emerge.
– Another thing on Lindholm: Make it one goal and four points in four games since the deadline passed and he was given two new linemates in Jakub Lauko and Marat Khusnutdinov. No secret sauce here, but it feels like pairing Lindholm with two straight-line burners has allowed him to maximize his hockey brain and put pucks in places where he knows they’re going to be. Subtle plays, but effective all the same.
– Every team in the league wants to find a way to make this happen for their club, but boy, would I love to see the Bruins pull off their own version of the Brandon Hagel trade that the Lightning pulled off in 2022. What a player. Beyond the obvious skills, dude just has a motor that never stops humming along.
– Lot of talk — and rightfully so — about the Panthers, Capitals, and Maple Leafs and what they could do this spring in the East. But I’m not sleeping on the Lightning. I loved their deadline, adding both Yanni Gourde and Oliver Bjorkstrand (a super underrated secondary scorer), and their defense is full of heady, veterans that play a game that just seems like a nightmare to go against over the course of seven games. And hey, after going on three straight deep runs, bowing out in the first round in back-to-back seasons may actually be the best thing to happen to Tampa in terms of a deep run in 2025.
