Playing with basically their complete roster against a Capitals squad that rested Alex Ovechkin and most of its other top stars, the Bruins struggled to get much of anything going in a 4-1 loss to Washington before 14,916 fans at the Garden on Wednesday night.
"There's no doubt there was a pretty big distraction looming," said Bruins forward Blake Wheeler. "That's no excuse to come out and perform this way. I think everyone in this room wanted to put on a nice show for our crowd before we go overseas. We didn't do that, so it was disappointing from that stance."
The Bruins departed for Belfast right after the game. They'll play an exhibition game there on Saturday, then move on to Prague on Sunday. They'll remain in the Czech Republic until finishing their two-game set with Phoenix to open the regular season on Oct. 9 and 10.
The Bruins played on Wednesday like their minds were already on the trip overseas, but coach Claude Julien wasn't going to let them off the hook that easily.
"We're not into lame excuses, but there was a lot on their plates today," said Julien. "I still think our effort wasn't a very good effort tonight and I think they realize it as well. We're in the stage now where we've really cut down to our team. I would say basically camp is over. Let's start working toward putting some lines together, working with them and we've got about nine or 10 days here until the real deal starts. We should use that time to make our team better and get ourselves in sync."
The Bruins were never quite in sync on Wednesday, falling behind 4-0 before Mark Recchi scored a power-play goal in the third to avoid the shutout.
Boston did try out a few new things, shuffling the lines with rookie Tyler Seguin moving to center between Wheeler and Michael Ryder and Jordan Caron sliding into Seguin's spot alongside Patrice Bergeron and Recchi.
"It's the first time they've played together," said Julien. "They had some good shifts. I didn't mind it. Now whether we continue with that I think we need to sit down and really look at what we have here to be able to say whether we want to stay in that direction."
The Bruins have time to sort out their line combinations and create some chemistry before the games start counting for real, but they'll have to accomplish that in unfamiliar surroundings in Europe. That's not necessarily a bad thing though, according to Julien.
"We're going to Belfast, but then we're going to be in Prague for the whole week," said Julien. "I think there's going to be a certain stability there. We're going to be in the same hotel and practicing pretty well in the same rinks … It will be a little bit like starting on the road at the start of the season. It will give the guys a chance to spend more time together, but not having to move around so much as what we've done so far at the beginning of camp."
The Bruins better respond well to the chance to jell on the road in Europe, because efforts like Wednesday won't be tolerated when the real games begin.
"We need to understand the urgency of making sure that we ready for the first game of the season," said Julien.
