BOSTON —Â The year 2014 didn’t end well for the Bruins, which has made the margin for error entering 2015 much slimmer than in recent seasons.
The Bruins lost 4-3 in a shootout to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday night at TD Garden for their eighth defeat following a win this season.
An inability to put together win streaks of three games or more — Boston has just two such streaks through 38 games — has prevented the B’s from gaining any ground in an improved Eastern Conference over the last month. The Bruins are now one point behind the Washington Capitals for the second wild-card playoff spot with two more games played.
Inconsistency from game-to-game isn’t the only problem in that area for Boston. Failing to play quality periods on a consistent basis and execute for a full 60 minutes also is an issue for the B’s, as evidenced in Wednesday’s loss.
The Bruins dominated puck possession for the first five minutes of the game. But when the Leafs opened the scoring with a goal from Leo Komarov, they started to tilt the ice in their favor. If not for a few fortunate bounces on David Krejci and Torey Krug’s second-period goals, the Bruins would have entered the final period trailing.
To Boston’s credit, it did make a strong push toward the end of the second period and for the final 25 minutes leading into the shootout. The Bruins had 13-2 shots on goal advantage from the start of the third period through overtime. In fact, the Leafs barely had the puck during the extra frame (zero shots). The issue was a lull in the middle of the game that allowed Toronto to build a 3-1 second-period lead and force Boston to chase the game.
“I think we showed that we are capable of playing well when we set our minds to it,” Bruins head coach Claude Julin said. “The second half was more of that. But I keep saying, as a team you’ve got to be able to come and play 60 minutes of hockey, especially in the positions that we’re in right now. We need to play 60 minutes.
“I’m not saying I’m disappointed in the way we came back, because if there’s anything that was positive, it was that. I thought we did a great job of getting back into the game, tying it up. Those are great things that we can talk about. We also have to look at the reality, and the thing is we had to come back in a game because we didn’t play a good first half. We have to be ready to play 60 minutes.”
Despite their inconsistent play, the Bruins are a better team than their 19-15-4 record would indicate. This roster has enough talent to, at the very least, earn a playoff spot. The onus falls on the players to perform at the level expected of them.
“The coaches can only do so much,” Bruins forward Milan Lucic said. “The management put a good team together, but it’s up to us. As players we’ve got to take it upon ourselves to go out there and play the system, execute it and start putting those wins together and not having lulls in our game. We’ve got to take responsibility as individuals and teammates and keep ourselves and each other accountable in being better so we don’t have those letdowns. You hope that it happens sooner than later.”
All four lines scored and nine players tallied at least one point in Monday’s impressive 5-2 win over the Detroit Red Wings. That’s the kind of balanced effort Boston needs to turn its season around.
“We don’t win because an individual does it all by himself; we’ve never been built that way,” Lucic said. “We can’t just rely on (Tuukka Rask) every night to bail us out, we can’t just rely on (Zdeno Chara) to play 30 minutes, and we can’t just rely on one line to score every game. It’s about everyone stepping up and doing their job.
“If you look around the league and the team’s that are winning and the teams that have won the last four or five Stanley Cups, it’s because everyone’s been able to step up and do their part. … We made it 3-3, we pushed hard to play to win tonight and I think we need to have a good practice on Friday and get things going again in the right direction on Saturday.”
Thumbnail photo via Gregory Fisher/USA TODAY Sports Images
