Bruins get back to losing ways with crumbling vs. Blackhawks

In what's become a lost year for the Bruins (their first since 2016), the problems are aplenty. Those problems go beyond the club's inability to score or get saves on a consistent basis, and they even go beyond their unfortunate penchant for last-minute goals. But one that's lingered about as a sneaky underlying issue ─ and one that came back to the surface Thursday against Chicago ─ has been the Black and Gold's knack for giving up quick-strike tallies in rapid succession.

And it was that problem that paved the way to Boston's latest defeat, as the Blackhawks struck for three goals in a 1:33 span in the third period of a once-tied at 1-1 contest to sink the Bruins by a 5-2 final at TD Garden.

It began with a Ryan Donato goal at the 3:14 mark of the third period. And it continued with a Tyler Bertuzzi cheapie through Jeremy Swayman just 69 seconds later. And then came the groans from a frustrated Garden crowd when Kevin Korchinski by all means put the game away with the third goal of the meltdown, scored just 24 seconds after Bertuzzi doubled Chicago's lead.

“It happens too often to be something that isn’t a problem," Bruins winger Morgan Geekie said after the loss. "I don’t know. Especially in front of our home crowd, that’s a tough showing for us. We just can’t let games get away like that.

“The same thing that’s plagued us all year plagued us again tonight. It seems like we’re too stubborn to figure it out. We’ve got to learn to play a full 60 minutes. It’s something we’ve struggled with all year and it’s something we struggled with again tonight. You see how well we play when we’re on and we play a consistent 60. And then we have games like tonight where we get away from it for 10 minutes and teams run away on us and we can’t figure out how to get back in [to the game].” 

And for the Bruins, that third-period collapse was headlined by Swayman, who finished the period with three goals on three shots against. (The Blackhawks added a fourth goal in the third period with an empty-net goal, giving them four goals on as many shots over the final 20 minutes of the victory.)

“They won that couple minutes and that decided the game," Swayman said. “It’s just a tough two minutes that unfortunately decided the game.”

The loss ended what was a two-game winning streak for Swayman. And in what's been a theme of his season (with the strong performances weighed down by frequent clunkers) put an obvious damper on what's been an otherwise strong month for the first-year, full-time starter, with Swayman having entered Thursday with a .919 save percentage in four April games prior to tonight's 16-of-20 performance, which dropped the April save percentage down to .903.

At the other end, the Black and Gold's offense was once again carried by their top line. David Pastrnak opened things up and put himself on the board for the first goal of the evening midway through the first period, while Geekie tried to stop the bleeding in the third period (but only after the Blackhawks' runaway train of back-to-back-to-back markers) for the B's with his 31st goal of the season.

Approaching their final weekend of the season, the Bruins will get back to work Sunday afternoon with a 3:30 p.m. head-to-head with the Penguins.