Some nights they’ve been able to get away with showing up for just a period or two and still come away with a victory. Other nights the lack of focus and effort has resulted in losses to teams the Bruins should be beating. But regardless of the individual results, the common theme has been a dramatic drop-off in the effort and intensity that characterized the club’s success earlier this season.
“We’re not doing the basic things, not doing the little things that made us successful, that made us a good hockey team,” Bruins center Chris Kelly said after Friday’s practice as the club prepared for Saturday’s clash with Pittsburgh. “We have a lot of talent in this room, but so do a lot of other teams. What separated us from the average teams and the below average teams is our work ethic. When we outworked other teams and focused on the smaller details we were successful, because our talent then took over. I think we’re getting away from that.”
Failing to put in the required work is inexcusable, but it’s also easily correctable. Effort is one element in the Bruins’ game that the players can control, and they know they have to get back to the kind of habits that made them Stanley Cup champions last spring and arguably the league’s top team again for much of this season.
“You’re not going to play 82 perfect games and I don’t think anyone expects us to,” Kelly said. “But I think what they do expect us to do is compete each and every night and show up to work. I think if you asked the coaching staff and management if we showed up to work and showed up to compete each and every night and didn’t win, they’d still be happy. But the fact that we’re not doing that is the concerning part."
It’s not simply the physical effort that’s at issue either. It’s the mental lapses that have really been costly.
“I think our whole team can be better,” Bruins coach Claude Julien said. “Right now our focus, the mental part of our game isn’t there. … Mental preparation also tells you how much you want to put into the game, and right now I don’t think we’re putting in as much into it as we did when we were playing extremely well, and I think that’s the main issue right now. That’s the part of our game we have to find, and like every other team we’re going to have to work our way out of this.”
If there’s a bright side to the Bruins’ current 4-4-1 slump over the last nine games, it’s that the team has recognized the problem.
“All the details, our heads are not into it for the full 60 minutes,” Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask said. “We’re just going through the motions sometimes and not really doing the things that we’re supposed to do, then one mistake leads to another. We need to have a better overall awareness of our game and put our minds into it a little more.
“It’s been like that for the past few games now,” Rask added. “We’ve won some games, but we haven’t played our best and got away with it. [Thursday] night we didn’t score a goal, so maybe that will help us to wake up and realize that we need to play a lot better.”
The Bruins lost 3-0 to last-place Carolina on Thursday. The Hurricanes have just 19 wins all season, but they went 4-0-0 against Boston with Thursday’s meeting putting an exclamation point on the season sweep.
“Sometimes when you come back and play one good period and end up winning a game there’s that false sense of security,” Kelly said, referring to Tuesday’s 4-3 win over the Senators when the Bruins overcame a sluggish start with a rally in the third period. “But that Ottawa game we didn’t play well. … Hopefully [Thursday] night was an eye-opener to everyone. I think it was. We need to come out and play a solid 60 minutes.”
If the Bruins don’t snap out of this slide quickly, changes could be coming. On Friday, Julien didn’t switch up any of his line combinations, feeling that it was the entire team, not any individual players who have been failing to perform.
“I think today, it’s not about changing the groups or changing lines or stuff like that. It’s mostly about bringing the tempo and our work ethic up,” Julien said. “Anybody who watched our practice today, I think saw that it had a pretty good pace. This is kind of what we’ve got to carry into our upcoming games here, bring our work ethic and commitment and everything else up to the next level that we have to bring it to.
“If it was one or two players that weren’t pulling their load it would be one thing,” Julien added. “I think right now it’s a whole team thing, from the goaltender out to our last player, it’s a team thing.”
But Julien won’t hesitate to make changes if the problems persist. And he won’t be the only one. General manager Peter Chiarelli could make even more drastic moves if he decides outside help in the form of trades are required to shake the club out of its malaise.
That threat could be a powerful motivating tool. Knowing the Bruins have the ability to make a run at another Cup, no one wants to be shipped out of Boston.
“If I’m worrying about that, if we’re all worrying about that every night, then this little funk we’re in is going to get way, way worse,” Kelly said of the potential for trades. “As players, those are things that are out of your control. In order to avoid those things, you need to play better. I think we need to focus on coming out [Saturday] afternoon and getting back to the basics, and I think we’ll have success.”
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