Mistakes lead to 4-1 loss for Bruins

This time, the Bruins could not outscore their mistakes.

In another mistake-filled outing from the B’s, they fell to the Pittsburgh Penguins, 4-1, in what had to be a concerning performance at the Garden on Thursday night, coming on the heels of a bad outing against New Jersey in which they managed to score enough goals to hide the pockmarks in the 5-4 shootout win.

No such luck on Thursday.

For the second time in as many games, the B’s started the third period with a hard-earned 2-0 deficit as the sloppiness that dogged them in their comeback win over the Devils on Tuesday carried over.

But again, they tried to make a push in the third. Patrice Bergeron set up Brad Marchand, who snapped his 14th of the year over Casey DeSmith’s shoulder at 11:14.

It would be a brief, shining moment on the rather homely performance for the Bruins.

Less than two minutes later at 13:07, the Pens restored their two-goal lead, off another Bruins’ mistake. David Pastrnak, briefly reinstated on the top line, turned over the puck in the neutral zone and the Pens came right back on a two-on-one. Evan Rodrigues fed Jason Zucker for the easy goal and the Pens were on their way.

Jake Guentzel added an empty-netter and that was that.

The Bruins’ best player in the first period was goalie Daniel Vladar. It was not exactly a shooting gallery, but the Bruins defensemen were having a brutal time breaking the puck out. Passes were off the mark, dump-outs went the distance for icings. It was not pretty. It got to the point that coach Bruce Cassidy abandoned his original pairs and loaded up with his two best puck-movers Charlie McAvoy and Matt Grzelcyk for a time.

Vladar calmly made all the saves he had to, while the Penguins’ best chance did not even hit the net. Zucker got behind Connor Clifton for a clean breakaway, but his shot went over the net and the 6-foot-5 goaltender.

Despite being outshot 7-2 in the first, the B’s had the only power play, but they could do little. Bergeron had the best chance from the bumper, but his hard wrister went just wide.

It went from bad to worse in the second period. First came the troublesome news that Brandon Carlo, who was playing his second game since missing 10 games with a concussion, would not return due to an “upper body” injury.

Then the Bruins just kept playing the way they did in the first period.

After Vladar stopped Jared McCann on a clean breakaway, Zach Aston-Reese put the Pens up 1-0 at 2:01. Brandon Tanev sent a backhand pass into the slot that went through Grzelcyk, Clifton and finally Charlie Coyle before Aston-Reese buried it past Vladar.

Cassidy, never afraid to mix up his forward lines, made a radical change. He bumped up Zach Senyshyn from the third line to play right wing on the top line, dropped the struggling Pastrnak to the David Krejci line and Craig Smith went down to play with Coyle and Anders Bjork.

It produced some more offensive zone time and some shots on goalie DeSmith (the B’s outshot the Pens 13-10 in the second) but nothing in any of the three zones was what you could describe as crisp.

And then at 13:12, Pittsburgh doubled its lead when defenseman Mike Matheson went nearly the distance for the goal. Matheson took a short feed from Anthony Angello near the top of the faceoff and he took off down the right side. He blew past Jeremy Lauzon at the top of the circle, avoided a flailing Lauzon’s desperate stick-check attempt, cut across the net and tucked it inside the post.

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