A point of no return
Inconsistent B’s frustrate Neely
Points left on the table. That’s what troubles Bruins president Cam Neely the most, the half-dozen or more points his team should have earned during the first half of the season.
“I’m probably not as optimistic about where we are, because I think we’ve left some points on the table that could have separated us a little more,” said Neely in Raleigh, N.C., Sunday afternoon before the Bruins’ 4-3 overtime loss to the Hurricanes.
With a day off yesterday in St. Louis, where they face the Blues tonight, the B’s clung precariously to second place in the Atlantic Division. Their status isn’t very secure, given that all the teams bunched tightly behind them in the standings have played fewer games. After tonight’s game, it will be five fewer for third-place Ottawa and fourth-place Toronto.
“We’ve played more games now than a lot of teams and we didn’t separate ourselves as much as we could have and would have liked to,” said Neely. “So that part’s a little frustrating.”
And a wild card berth for an Atlantic team seems improbable because the Metropolitan Division has so many strong clubs.
“It looks like if you’re not in the top three (in the Atlantic), then you’re in trouble,” said Neely. “So the way it looks now, we’ve got to separate ourselves from some teams in our own division and not have to worry about the wild card and the other division.”
The daunting challenge in that, though, is the Bruins’ weird home/road disparity. For the last 11⁄2 seasons, the B’s played extremely well in away games and less than mediocre on home ice. The record on the road over that span is 37-20-8, at home, 26-28-6.
At the end of this fourgame trip, which wraps up in Nashville Thursday, the Bruins will have 15 road games remaining. At the same time, they’ll have played only 19 home games with 22 left. Normally, this would be good news. Not for the Bruins, who this year boast a terrific road record (12-7-5) but are again below .500 at home (9-10-0).
There are many hurdles standing between the Bruins and a return to the playoffs this spring. But it’s safe to say that if they don’t start playing better and winning consistently on Garden ice, they’ll be staying home from the Cup derby for a third successive season.
That could prove intolerable for team ownership, which has made it clear it expects the return of playoff hockey (and revenue) at the Garden this spring. The Bruins are attempting to pull off a tough doubleedged goal of rebuilding the team with youth, while making the postseason.
Those can be conflicting goals.
“I would agree if we didn’t have the core of (veteran) players that we do have,” Neely said. “With a young guy like Pasta (David Pastrnak) improving so much, and adding some of the pieces that we did, we felt we could compete for the playoffs. And again, I don’t like to say just compete for the playoffs, but it is a step along the way to getting to where we want to be eventually.
“We felt with our core, with (goalie) Tuukka (Rask) playing better, with our defense playing better, we’d be OK. We didn’t foresee struggling to score the way we have or our power play struggling as it is.
“It’s been a frustrating year, because we’ve shown plenty of times that we can play, and play well. Then there’s time where you’re saying, ‘What happened?’ If you didn’t see those good times you’d look at the team differently. But there have been enough good times that you have to say, ‘OK, we can do this.’ We just have to be more consistent on a regular basis.”
Clearly, the Bruins have to continue to prosper on the road and start winning consistently at home. Or else April could be an ugly month again.
“There’s still a lot of hockey to be played,” said Neely. “Where we’re at now, we’re still in the picture. We have to make sure we stay in the picture.”