They could offer no defense for their own play in his absence.
"It's no excuse," defenseman Andrew Ference said after Saturday's 3-1 loss to Montreal in Game 2 of their Eastern Conference quarterfinal at the Garden. "It's a team game for a reason. The reason you have good systems in place is so that when you do get injuries it's not about missing one person. The team game we play here is all based around systems. It's about everybody doing their part. While you miss a key piece, it's not an excuse to not be sharp and I don't think anybody in this room is going to use it as an excuse."
Chara missed the game after being hospitalized Friday night for dehydration. He attempted to play and even skated in warm-ups, but the medical staff declared him out for the game after he labored through even that light pregame workout.
"He deserves so much credit for what he did tonight, coming to the rink and going out there for warm-ups," Bruins coach Claude Julien said. "He came off the ice and he was sweaty. He was dizzy. And there was no way in the world that we could have used him tonight. Absolutely no way. And the doctors told us the same thing. Even attempting to come was courageous on his part, but there was absolutely no way he could have played tonight. It's unfortunate, we missed him. He did the best he could to even try, but to be honest with you, it wasn't even close."
The Bruins hope two more days of rest and fluids will be enough to have Chara back in the lineup on Monday when they go to Montreal for Game 3. After seeing the defense without Chara on Saturday, there's no doubt that the Bruins can't afford to have him out again.
"You can't ever say that you didn't miss [Chara]," Julien said. "He's one of the best defensemen in the league and when you lose a guy like that it leaves you with a big hole. Having said that, I still think our D's are capable of handling themselves and can definitely be better. And those costly goals are what we're talking about. They have to make the other team earn their goals and I don't think that was the case tonight. We certainly have to get better in regards to that and those kinds of mistakes and are type we can't keep making."
The Canadiens jumped on an early miscue by Johnny Boychuk, who is normally Chara's partner, for a 1-0 lead just 43 seconds into play. A breakdown in coverage in front six seconds after defenseman Dennis Seidenberg took an interference penalty made it 2-0 just 2:20 into the first and an ill-advised attempt at a home-run pass by Seidenberg late in the second period killed the momentum Boston had built.
The Bruins had rallied for a goal earlier in the second to pull within one, but Seidenberg's pass to Nathan Horton was picked off, and Montreal counterattacked. Yannick Weber, a defenseman playing forward because Andrei Kostitsyn was out injured, banged home the rebound for the game's final goal.
"Obviously he's our captain, he's our leader," forward Mark Recchi said of Chara. "But there are no excuses for that. We didn't play like we can, we weren't composed tonight and we didn't play the proper way. You have to give [the Canadiens] some credit. Every turnover we made they put it in the net."
The Canadiens definitely smelled blood when they learned that Chara would be out.
"You have a guy that is 6-foot-9 and plays 27 minutes a game, he is an absolute monster out there," Montreal defenseman James Wisniewski said. "What he can do offensively with his shot and defensively with his reach, this was a game we had to try to take advantage of and we came out with a victory."
And the Bruins came out searching for answers for how they couldn't have done a better job of stepping up in their leader's absence.
"It's a team over here that's really deep," Ference said. "We've dealt with injuries over and over to big guys. While you miss a great player, we're totally capable of playing our system. Our defense is more than just our defensemen, so while we miss him, it isn't something that we're going to use as a crutch or an excuse."
