Bruins deliver another pathetic Garden effort
Blanked by lowly Islanders
The Bruins have had their share of bad losses this season, but yesterday’s 4-0 loss to the New York Islanders at the Garden zoomed to the top of the list. What made it so bad? A list of gory details:
• The B’s were shut out by the last-place team in the Eastern Conference, one that was 26th in the NHL in goals-against average (3.05) entering the game.
• With a chance to create some much-needed space between themselves and other playoff contenders, they admittedly were not emotionally engaged.
• After stepping up in Saturday’s big win against Philadelphia, some of the B’s best players were not good. Linemates Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak all had minus-3 ratings, and goalie Tuukka Rask was pulled after two periods.
• The B’s again dipped below .500 (10-11-0) at home. They have yet to win consecutive games on Garden ice this season, which is problematic considering 20 of their remaining 35 games are on Causeway Street.
• Perhaps most annoying of all for their fans, the Bruins extinguished any hope that they’d turned a corner after five solid efforts.
The team will not feel good about itself as it travels to Detroit to face the Red Wings tomorrow night, which is fine because the B’s can’t seem to build off their successes. They have a bunch of teams chasing them in the standings with games in hand, and in order to gain the separation they covet, they’ll need to go on the kind of run they’ve been incapable of manufacturing thus far.
“We were flat, obviously, flat from the get-go,” coach Claude Julien said during his slow burn at the dais after the game. “That first half of the game, we didn’t give up much until they scored that first goal. We were able to stay in it, but we weren’t generating much ourselves. This is the first year, for me as well, going through the condensed schedule, and I’m certainly not using the excuse.
“We were flat. How do you explain it? I don’t know. I know that it’s frustrating. I know that it’s disappointing. That’s all I can say.”
This was the kind of loss after which all captains and leaders were willing to give appropriate self-recriminations. Answers were harder to come by.
“We weren’t emotionally involved from the beginning,” David Krejci said. “When we are on our game, we’re just going, we’re talking, we’re making simple plays and passes. I didn’t see many of those early on.”
Added Zdeno Chara when asked what was most frustrating: “Not being where we were the last few games — mentally, emotionally and physically. I think we took a step back. We need to be obviously ready for every game, especially those games at home.”
Said Bergeron: “It shows you have to show up every night and not take things for granted. I think we did.”
The two teams played a lifeless first period and, after the B’s killed off two penalties in the second, they had an opportunity to seize momentum. The opposite happened. The Islanders scored three goals in a span of 5:20, the first by Nikolay Kulemin off messy defensive coverage and the second by Josh Bailey on which Rask was beaten to the short side. The third one was scored by Kulemin after Rask stopped a Casey Cizikas breakaway. His teammates could not pick him up.
The Bruins had a minute of power-play time to start the third period and generated nothing. Despite the Islanders’ normally porous play, this one felt like it was done with 19 minutes left. The B’s left the ice serenaded by boos.
“We have to look ourselves in the mirror and all be a little bit better,” Marchand said. “We all have to be prepared for every game. You can’t look at the guy beside us and think he’s going to do the job. We have to take a little onus on ourselves and all be a little better. As a team, we have to play the system together and we have to back each, other up. We have to play as one unit, and we didn’t do that.”
Maybe one of these days, the B’s will string a few wins together, but time is wasting. And the number of Bruins believers dwindles with each one of these terrible losses.