The good news? They came out flying on Thursday night against the Blue Jackets and they never slowed down. The bad news? They still couldn't win.
It was truly disheartening. The Bruins played an inspired game and didn't take off a shift for all 60 minutes, yet they still came out on the wrong end of a 3-2 score.
Still, Claude Julien said he's not worried about his players getting down on themselves.
"Not really, because the only way you can get out of these things is you’ve got to go back next game and work even harder," Julien said after the loss. "It’s not that complicated. To hang our heads is going to make it worse. To feel sorry or not go out there and work as hard is going to make it worse. We know that. We’re professionals. We need to act like professionals, and professionals will come back and play even harder."
The game itself started out promising, with Michael Ryder showing off his scoring touch just a couple minutes after the puck dropped. It was the type of goal that Ryder flashes from time to time that makes him look as good a sniper as there is in the league, and it looked like the type of goal that would open up a Bruins blowout victory.
There was also Tuukka Rask, who was making the difficult saves look easy. There was also Patrice Bergeron, still adjusting to the splint on his thumb but finding room at the offensive blue line and wristing a shot past Steve Mason.
The pieces were there, and the effort was there, but the win just didn't follow.
Fittingly, the costly double-major penalty that was wrongly called on Milan Lucic came as a result of an extra-effort lunge at the end of a play. Lucic reached for a puck in Mason's pads as the whistle blew, and Anton Stalman's stick hit a teammate. The Blue Jackets scored the game-winner 15 seconds later.
Maddening? Maybe. But Bergeron, for one, wasn't ready to call the Bruins a victim of misfortune.
"We still feel pretty good," Bergeron said. "It’s obviously not the way you want to end a game, but it’s a tough break on that penalty … but at the same time, we have to make sure we finish those games when we have leads like that. We had chances in the third period to put the game away."
Blake Wheeler had a similar attitude.
"I just feel like for the most part, the majority of the game, the ice was tilted in our favor," said Wheeler, who caught a bad break of his own when he took a Dennis Wideman shot off his leg. "We were creating turnovers, we were forechecking well, our back pressure was good, and Tuukka was playing well. It was just a matter of that thing just going in the net and when you get the opportunity and it doesn’t go, you just keep working for the next opportunity and bury the next one, and I think we ran out of those. We ran out of the next opportunity and they cashed in."
The silver linings are running thin for the Bruins, but the sight of Marc Savard at practice on Friday is one remaining ray of hope. The effort was there on Thursday, and the addition of a true playmaker to the lineup could be the final step to the Bruins' regaining their footing in the Eastern Conference.
For Julien, at least, that's the hope.
"You can’t say 'when' if your team doesn't follow up with a good effort next game," the coach said when asked if it was more a matter of "if" or "when" in terms of the next victory. "I think it's just a matter of sticking with it here and finding a way to make it happen."
That quest begins on Saturday against Ottawa, and the Bruins do need to make it happen. They really have no other choice.
