Bruins Notes: Bruce Cassidy Provides Blunt Assessment On ‘Losing Hockey’

It was a rather disappointing effort in just about all phases Wednesday as the Boston Bruins were handed a 6-3 loss against the Philadelphia Flyers at Wells Fargo Center.

The Bruins’ offense wasn’t able to capitalize on its scoring chances despite outshooting the Flyers 40-25 in the contest. The defensive groupings suffered a number of breakdowns on the back end. And goaltender Jeremy Swayman wasn’t able to bail Boston out like he had so many times during his rookie season.

Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy put it rather bluntly while calling it a recipe for “losing hockey.”

“Our breakdowns were bad in front of him (Swayman),” Cassidy said after the game, as shared by the team. “(It) wasn’t a lot of quantity, but high-quality, just mistakes from the back end. It’s losing hockey is what it is. It’s how you lose games. You do dumb things and good teams come back at you and they finish and that’s what happened.”

Cassidy specifically noted a pair of 2-on-1s in which the Flyers scored easy goals, and a handful of other missed-played pucks which helped Philadelphia cash in, too.

“… We forced a play in it’s in our net, a pinch early it’s in our net, two-on-ones. Plays like that hurt us big time tonight,” Cassidy said. “Because we didn’t get the save, as well, coming back the other way. And that was the difference. They took advantage of opportunities that I think we presented to them. Credit them for finishing and finding the open guy.”

Bruins Wrap: Boston Handed First Loss As Flyers Pull Away In Third

Oct 20, 2021

Here are some other notes from Bruins-Flyers:

— Cassidy added how the group could have used more from Swayman, among others on the back end. The second-year goaltender allowed five goals on 24 shots including a few leaky goals, like that by Cam Atkinson that got the scoring started in the first period.

“He’s not going to be perfect every night. Clearly he wasn’t tonight, not his best,” Cassidy said. “We needed some saves there when we broke down. That’s it. Just didn’t give us when we needed them.”

— Swayman took responsibility for his individual performance after the loss.

“Obviously, (I’m) accountable for what happened,” Swayman said, as shared by the Bruins. “Thought the team played great, great comeback in the second. I just want to do my job better and give them a better chance to win.”

He noted that he should have made adjustments in response to the Flyers attack.

“That’s one of their mentalities going in. They want to use the boards, they have lively boards and then they have a guy coming in through the middle every time,” Swayman added. “So I should read that better, keep my hips up ice and it’s something I can learn from in experience.”

— Nick Foligno left Wednesday’s game in the second period with what the team revealed to be an upper-body injury. The veteran winger played his final shift with about four minutes left in the second period.

“He just pulled something. I don’t think it’s, hopefully nothing serious, but he wasn’t able to return so that’s never a good sign,” Cassidy said. “We’ll see how he is tomorrow.”

— Brad Marchand continued to produce while scoring his third goal of the season to tie the game 3-all late in the second period.

— The Bruins will return to the ice Friday as they travel to the Buffalo Sabres with goaltender Linus Ullmark set to start his first game for Boston.