Bruins can’t close the deal, again

The Bruins played another game against a nonplayoff team on Thursday. They again blew a third period lead. They again had to settle for the loser point. It is not a trend that is befitting a Stanley Cup contender.

After blowing a two-goal lead to the New Jersey Devils on New Year’s Eve, they came home to the Garden to face a gritty Columbus Blue Jackets team that is now riding a league best 12-game point streak (8-0-4) despite having 11, yes, 11 players out injured.

The B’s have now lost six in a row when the games have gone to extended time and lead the league in overtime/shootout losses (11).

In Thursday’s 2-1 loss to the Jackets, this started on a promising note, but it quickly devolved into another L. David Pastrnak scored the B’s lone goal on a power-play rocket and then just missed the net on a backdoor pass from David Krejci. But when the Jackets recovered the puck and started their rush, Pastrnak made an ill-advised poke check attempt on Seth Jones. He missed, the Jackets went the other way on a 2-on-1 and Jones fed Pierre-Luc Dubois for an easy game-winner.

In the third period, the lost lead was hardly egregious. Sonny Milano threw a puck toward the net from the boards, it bounced off Matt Grzelcyk’s leg and deflected past Tuukka Rask. It was just your run-of-the-mill bad hockey bounce.

But despite their nine-game point streak (4-0-5) , bad things keep happening to the Bruins lately, especially late in games.

“I didn’t go in (the room) after, we’ll assess it tomorrow, but I’m sure no one’s pleased,” said coach Bruce Cassidy. “It’s another lead going into the third period we weren’t able to close out. That’s as frustrating as anything. You give up a goal, you push and try to get another one. I thought there were some opportunities around the net. They did a good job of blocking shots. We hit one off the post. As for the overtime, some if it, we’ve got to smarten up. Can’t get caught diving down low. It’s happened more than once this year on those puck battles away from your net. If you don’t make a play at their end, you’ve got to make sure you put yourself in a better spot defensively to defend the rush or get off the ice. That’s cost us a few times, so at some point you have to learn from those mistakes as well.”

Pastrnak took the blame for the OT goal.

“It’s obviously my bad. I kind of dove in,” said Pastrnak, who reached the 30-goal mark in his 42nd game. “(Jones) made a good play. It was a bad read by me.”

Pastrnak conceded that the repeated failures in extra time are starting to affect the club mentally.

“It’s frustrating, obviously. It’s probably getting a little bit in our head. We want to win one of those and we’re losing some confidence. We haven’t been doing well there, so it’s frustrating,” said Pastrnak.

“Early in overtime, we had a clean 3-on-2 and we don’t get a shot on net. Like I said, there was a little confidence missing there. You don’t want to make a bad shot and then … they fire back at you and they’re going to end up scoring. We need to win one of those and hopefully it’s going to be the next one.”

The good news is that in the playoffs there are no shootouts and the overtimes are no longer 3-on-3 but 5-on-5.

The bad news is the B’s have managed just two 5-on-5 goals in their last three games. You can’t live like that for long. On Thursday, they were playing a typical John Tortorella team that was determined to block shots (the Jackets were credited with 15 blocks, though it seemed like more). Cassidy again tried Charlie Coyle as second line right wing with David Krejci to create another potential scoring and, though it looked good at times, it did not produce. The same could be said for the Anders Bjork-Par Lindholm-Danton Heinen line. Ditto for the Joakim Nordstrom-Sean Kuraly-Chris Wagner group.

They all looked good, and threatened to score at times. They just didn’t. And that seems as much of a problem as blowing these leads.

Either way, this team looks to be treading water until GM Don Sweeney pulls the trigger on a deal that everyone is expecting him to make. And it increasingly looks like he’s going to have to make a darn good one.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2N5OVNt