WILMINGTON, Mass. —By now, the trend has been well established. It’s no longer a coincidence or statistical quirk.
When the Bruins get out to an early lead, they’re virtually unbeatable. When they fall behind, they are rarely able to recover. So why is it that the Bruins seem to come out flat so often?
“Sometimes, you overthink these situations,” coach Claude Julien said. “That’s the other part too, if you keep hammering over and over that you need a good start, it ends up creeping into your head and sometimes, it can be more of a negative than a positive. So sometimes, it’s about changing your way of sending a message and hopefully getting that result.”
Julien is still struggling to find the best method of delivery, but there’s no question about the content of that message. The need for a strong start is essential. The Bruins are 12-1-1 this season when scoring first and 11-0-0 when leading after the first period, but just 4-9-3 when giving up the first goal and 0-6-2 when trailing after 20 minutes.
So it’s no surprise that Thursday’s poor start in Montreal was still the main topic of conversation at the Bruins’ practice facility on Friday, where Julien’s latest approach was to give the players a day off from practice after back-to-back games on the road.
“We just have to come out hard the first five minutes,” rookie defenseman Steven Kampfer said. “That dictates a lot of the game. We have to come out hard, come out fast and start taking the body. And hopefully, that will change the game and start swinging momentum in our favor.”
Montreal took hold of all the momentum on Thursday, as Michael Cammalleri scored on a penalty shot just 1:04 into the opening period and Maxim Lapierre added another goal at 6:24. The Bruins battled back to cut the deficit to one goal three different times, but that was as close as they came in a 4-3 loss.
“We dug ourselves a hole there, and it was too deep to come out of,” Kampfer said. “It’s something we have to learn from. Going forward, we know we have to come out with a quicker start and start putting teams on their heels.”
Julien did point to his club’s play in the final two periods when asked if there were any positives to take from the game in Montreal, but he knows two good periods aren’t enough when you come out flat in the first.
“The way we played in the third period [was a positive],” Julien said. “We started to turn our game around in the second period as well. Again, we go back to trying to find a way to get that game right from the get-go. It seems like either it takes us a while or we have our backs against the wall before we start playing the type of game that we want to play. So somehow, we have to find a way to create that. It’s about composure and making some good plays and putting some emotion in that and hopefully get better starts.”
