Unfortunately for one Boston posse — known throughout the land as the NHL’s Bruins — lighting the lamp has been a problem so far this season, and it has been costing the ninth-place team dearly. But it’s not their only problem.
The B’s have popped just 31 goals in 13 games, putting them in the NHL’s bottom five at 2.34 goals per game.
Head coach Claude Julien’s problems don’t end in the offensive zone, however. The Phil Kessel-less team’s issues extend all the way to the pipes as last season’s top netminder, Tim Thomas, continues to struggle to put up wins.
The Tank is coming off a 36-win, Vezina year but is just 4-5-0-0 in his first nine starts this season. Although his 2.66 goals-against average isn’t bad, it still puts him in the middle of the NHL pack – a far cry from where the Bruins and general manager Peter Chiarelli expected him to be after handing him approximately $20 million over four seasons this spring.
But Thomas, who has been known as a slow starter, isn’t worried about where this team is heading. Sure, the Black and Gold haven’t strung together back-to-back wins, but the way they’ve responded to a pair of lengthy injuries to vital members of their attack has impressed Thomas.
"Yeah, you'd like to win them all," Thomas told Bostonbruins.com on Monday, just one day after falling to the Rangers 1-0 in Manhattan. "But we're heading in the right direction — even if every game we're not quite getting the results.”
The Bruins have now played seven games without Milan Lucic (broken finger) and six games without Marc Savard (broken foot), going 3-3-1 since not having their full lineup on the bench. Thomas hasn’t enjoyed seeing the stars sidelined, either, as he’s 2-3 with back-to-back low-scoring losses. Despite the downfall, Thomas has noticed something different lately from this team — something he saw a season ago.
“I feel good,” he told the team’s Web site. “It's been kind of feast or famine [in terms of shots and saves] since the beginning of the year when we were playing a different game than we are now. Now we are playing the kind of game that I remember more from last year. And that [means the Bruins are] heading in the right direction."
While many can say Sunday’s 1-0 loss to the 9-5-1 Rangers is a sign of a team heading in the wrong direction because of a lack of a true scorer, Thomas saw both teams playing equally tough in all aspects of the game, which was marred in the eyes of the B’s due to a lucky goal.
"I didn't see the shot released," Thomas recalled. "I caught it maybe eight feet out from me, and I saw it fluttering out of my peripheral vision. [There] was a crowd, and everyone was trying to play good D, but I didn't pick it up until a little bit later. But we were actually in pretty good defensive position, and it was kind of a lucky shot as far as it went up, and he fanned on it. I'm not even sure if he could have put it where it ended up going if he did a straight shot.”
If Thomas and the B’s had grabbed that win, it would have been his third win in his last four starts. Instead, one of his best games of the season goes down as a second straight defeat.
