Up 3-1 in their first-round series with the Maple Leafs after a two-game sweep in Toronto last week, the Bruins came back to Boston and were quick to tell you that this year isn’t like last year.
The past was the past, and the Bruins were ready to prove as much. What made that opportunity to special and unique — even with a different opponent, with this being Toronto and not Florida — is that the Bruins were essentially in the same spot they found themselves in through four games a year ago. They were up 3-1 on Toronto like they were on the Panthers, and they were coming off their absolute best two-game stretch when it came to pure, team hockey in a hostile environment.
It’s admittedly rare in life that you get a second chance that’s a near carbon copy of your previous failure, and in such short order. And when that opportunity comes, missing it or repeating your mistakes is the last thing you can afford to do.
But, boy, did Tuesday night’s Game 5 overtime loss at TD Garden feel like something straight out of Apr. 2023.
Feb 19, 2024; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Boston Bruins right wing Justin Brazeau (55) skates in his first NHL game during the third period against the Dallas Stars at TD Garden. (Winslow Townson/USA TODAY Sports)
In the opening period of play. the Bruins lost a staggering 16 of their 20 faceoffs. They were especially bad at the dots closest to Jeremy Swayman, with losses in 10 of their 14 defensive-zone draws. That ‘helped’ keep the Bruins stuck in their own zone, and led to a first period that saw them out-shot 12-2 and out-attempted by an insane 28-7 mark during five-on-five play.
Their luck at the faceoff dot didn’t get all that much better between the first intermission and the game-winning goal stuffed in Swayman’s cage, either, as the Bruins lost 60 percent of their total faceoffs. The struggles at the dot were headlined by lefty center Pavel Zacha, who went just 4-for-17, including a 1-for-8 line against John Tavares.
Brazeau, meanwhile, finished without a shot or even a shot attempt in his 10:03 of time on ice.
The addition of Brazeau also gave the Bruins a bottom six that was not nearly fast enough between himself, Pat Maroon, and James van Riemsdyk. Given the way that the Bruins’ speed and tenacity on the forecheck had routinely forced the Maple Leaf defense into penalties, turnovers, and ultimately goals in the back of their net, to move away from that anxiety-instilling approach with both Beecher and Jakub Lauko out of Boston’s bottom-six grouping felt like something that made life easier for Toronto’s backend.
This wasn’t quite as drastic as breaking up Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand for the first time in almost a decade, but it was a strong deviation from some of the on-ice qualities that had given the Bruins success during their gutsy two-game tear in Toronto.
Dec 19, 2023; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Boston Bruins defenseman Matt Grzelcyk (48) during the third period against the Minnesota Wild at TD Garden. Mandatory Credit: Winslow Townson/USA TODAY Sports
And on the backend, after a day of intrigue when it came to potential changes, it was Matt Grzelcyk, not Derek Forbort, who drew back into action for the Black and Gold after sitting out as a healthy scratch for the previous two games.
Grzelcyk was replacing Kevin Shattenkirk, who played a defense-low 11:07 in Game 4 and was benched for the second half of the third period of Boston’s Game 3 win, and at the end of that day, that alone wasn’t the issue.
It’s the fact that Jim Montgomery decided to go away from Grzelcyk for the second straight postseason, only to re-insert him in a top-four role the next time out there. There’s not many defensemen in this league whose role is either healthy scratch or top-four fixture, and for the first half of this game, it felt like Grzelcyk was absolutely in his own head.
He struggled to make clean passes out of his own end, and was at times bailed out by the Leafs simply not being able to find the puck in their skates after a hemmed-in shift.
Grzelcyk would ultimately find his legs in the third period and put forth a strong third-period effort, with multiple keep-ins and individual battles in the attacking zone during what was Boston’s best sustained push of the frame and a strong one-on-one battle win at the other end to keep this game tied late. But like he was in Game 5 a year ago, the 5-foot-9 Grzelcyk was on the ice for the overtime goal against and will naturally take on the bulk of the damage for it.
By now, Grzelcyk is who he is. If you’re expecting him to suddenly become something he’s not at 30 years old, that’s on you. And this was the chief problem when the Bruins decided to keep him around for 2023-24. You simply had to feel as if the Bruins had to either fully commit to him (warts and all) or sever ties. This in-and-out style of deployment doesn’t seem to work for anybody involved, and that felt obvious when you look at the way Grzelcyk seemed to be fighting it (in all respects) for the first half of this contest.
A Grzelcyk-for-Shattenkirk swap should never be a team’s undoing, and I’m not even sure it was when you look at how the Bruins failed to do much of anything up front for entirely too long, but it’s another example of fiddling and overthinking something that may not have needed such a drastic overhaul from Games 4 to 5.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – APRIL 30: Brad Marchand #63 of the Boston Bruins takes a shot against Joseph Woll #60 of the Toronto Maple Leafs during the third period of Game Five of the First Round of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
This game even came with shades of 2023’s Game 5 when Brad Marchand found himself unable to bury the would-be game-winning goal on Joseph Woll in the third period of action.
When that puck just sailed over the net, you had a feeling that it could come back to haunt them, and it did.
In a game where the Bruins had a chance to exorcise the demons of last year, they instead complicated things for themselves, and largely through their own doing. And to make matters worse, there were multiple instances of the Leafs simply dying to give this game to the Bruins, namely with a horrendous offensive-zone penalty (Toronto’s seventh of the series) from William Nylander in the second period of play to large lulls in the second and third period where the Bruins were simply too cute against a goaltender making his first start in two weeks. Oh, and the Leafs played this game without their 69-goal scorer Auston Matthews as he continues to deal with an illness.
This was an opportunity that the Bruins simply couldn’t let slip. Not if they were going to truly follow through on the talk that this year was indeed different and that they had learned something from last year’s missteps.
“We weren’t good enough,” Montgomery said following the defeat. “Just simple as that. Toronto came out ready to play. They took it to us. Weren’t ready to match their desperation.
“We just weren’t good enough. We weren’t good enough. I don’t have something to give you that’s concrete on what led to our slow start besides Toronto was better than us.”
And now comes tuning out the outside noise — and as the series shifts back to always-noisy Toronto — while every decision will only be further scrutinized as flashbacks of last year creep into frame.
