It's do or die for the Boston Bruins on Monday.
Boston finds itself down 3-1 in its second-round series against the Tampa Bay Lightning after a Game 4 loss Saturday afternoon.
And now the B's must win the next three games against a tough Tampa team if they want to pack their bags and head to Edmonton for the Conference Finals.
So, what's Bruce Cassidy's message to his team?
"Listen, they will be told that the type of game we played today where we’re skating, we had some breakdowns in front of our net early on, we have to correct those, we need to be harder, we need to be more assertive in those areas," Cassidy said during his Zoom postgame press conference. "Guys that we rely on to be hard defensively, good awareness, checking players get scored on the first goal. We didn’t manage the puck again. It usually starts there. You turn pucks over against Tampa, it starts there. You have to be more assertive with your feet before you move a puck, take some ice. That one came back at us. After that I thought we were better at that to be quite honest.
"We’ll always talk about the things we do well and correct the things we don’t. I thought the penalty kill is a good example, we did a good job. This is two games in a row we’ve blocked a shot that went in our net and it just doesn’t happen over a long period of time. (Ondrej) Palat’s shot was blocked the other night by (Zdeno) Chara, it goes top corner, (Par) Lindholm blocks one tonight. Like I said, I thought our penalty kill corrected itself the other night. Even (Victor) Hedman got two goals the first game that went in off (Charlie) McAvoy. So some puck luck is not going our way, but having said that, they are a shot mentality team, and if we had that mentality too maybe we’d get some of these breaks where pucks go in off people, so that will be a bit of the message as well. Again, too much off net, not enough forcing them to block shots and make saves and see where the rebounds end up."
Loud and clear, coach.
Game 5 is set for Monday at 7 p.m. ET.
