It was a tough Friday night for the Bruins.
Boston, one of the NHL’s hottest teams, took on the Red Wings, one of the NHL’s worst teams, at Little Caesars Arena. The B’s jumped out to an early 1-0 lead in the opening minute of the game, but Detroit responded 1:32 later and never looked back, eventually handing the Black and Gold a 4-2 loss. It marked the first time the B’s lost back-to-back games in regulation this season.
Not much worked for Boston on Friday night, including the penalty kill which has been a strong point for the team in the early goings of the season. After the game, head coach Bruce Cassidy spoke on what exactly went wrong in the loss.
“Middle of the second period, I thought we found out game, started winning some races, winning some pucks (and) got ourselves back into it,” he said on NESN’s Bruins postgame coverage. “… We kept pushing. (David Pastrnak) had a great chance all alone in front, (Jonathan Bernier) made a great save on him.
“The third, they did a good job protecting the lead. We didn’t generate enough … we had some lines, I don’t know if they attempted a shot. You just need a little bit more in terms of finding a way to get it to the net get inside, generate some second chances, break down their defense and maybe something opens up. … I thought that was the issue for a lot of lines tonight. Didn’t generate any O-zone time and as a result they didn’t get much going offensively.
“I hate losing. It doesn’t matter who we play. … It’s a game I don’t think we were good enough early on. … Clearly our penalty kill broke down in bad spots all alone in the slot … that can’t happen. It can happen once or twice … but at the end of the day we did get back into it and had a chance to win.”
The Bruins’ penalty kill was one of the best in the NHL coming into Friday’s game, but the Red Wings were able to pot two power-play goals to help seal their fifth win of the season.
Here are some other notes from Friday’s Bruins-Red Wings game:
— Cassidy was hard on the younger players after the loss, particularly Peter Cehlarik, Anders Bjork and Zach Senyshyn.
“Pete made a good play to (David) Krejci, thats for sure,” he said on NESN’s Bruins postgame coverage, “but his overall game’s gotta be more consistent. I don’t know that he got inside much. … Senny tonight, Bjork and (Charlie) Coyle weren’t the same obviously, weren’t able to turn over as many pucks, (and) when they did they didn’t hang onto them in the O-zone. … They had a tougher time … they certainly didn’t hurt us, but they didn’t play to the level where you think they’re going to be consistent NHL players yet, but they’re young players so we’ll see how it goes next time.”
— Tuukka Rask didn’t have his best night in net, either. The netminder turned away 28 of 31 shots.
“Sometimes you let in bad goals and sometimes they’re not that bad,” Rask said after the game, as seen on NESN’s postgame coverage. “I had a chance on all of them, but what are you going to do?”
— Pastrnak extended his point streak to 14 games with his assist on Torey Krug’s second period goal.
He joins Bobby Orr as the only other Bruin to have a point streak of at least 12 games before the age of 24.
— Brad Marchand and Filip Hronek dropped the gloves in the second period, marking the ninth fighting major of Marchand’s career.
