The Boston Bruins implosion: How bad is it?
The Boston Bruins have fallen out of playoff contention with just nine games left to get it back. The Bruins have been in the playoffs every year since Claude Julien joined the club in 2007, and this could be the first year that Julien watches the post-season from the living room or the golf course.
The Bruins locker room can’t be a fun place to be in right now. It’s not like they’re the Buffalo Sabres (who couldn’t find the postseason with a map and directions), or the Edmonton Oilers (whose patron saint is Our Lady of Perpetual Rebuild), or the Toronto Maple Leafs (who have all the parts and the skill, but absolutely no desire to win anymore). They’re an amazing team with fantastic players. They just can’t get one and one to add up to two right now.
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Some of the players are still excessively positive. They’ve certainly played for worse organizations. They’ve got a good thing going in Boston, and know if they work their hardest, they can make magic happen again at the TD Garden.
“We lost some big games, but I still think we control our destiny,” said Bruins forward Chris Kelly after the disappointing game against the Lightning. “We have nine games left. If we go out and play well for these nine games, then good things will happen. We’ve got a good group here and I feel confident in our group. Right now, we’ve got to playing our best hockey and everyone’s got to be willing to commit to playing their best and tonight, that wasn’t the case.”
Some players are willing to call others out for not doing their job. While Brad Marchand was wise enough not to call out any one player specifically, he made his point crystal clear after the 5-3 loss to the Lightning.
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“It’s frustrating,” said Marchand. “You look at other teams around the league that we’re battling with, and they’re ‘going’ on every single night. It seems like everybody is playing the system, and playing the right way. We don’t know if we’re going to get that on each night. We can’t afford that. We need everybody committed to playing the system, and having their best game every night. I’ve said it before…if we have one passenger then that’s enough to cost us the game.”
“We were in a pretty good position for a while, and the fact that we let that slip . . . I’m sure it pisses a lot of guys in this room off, but that being said, we can still do it. We still have nine games left, and we can still make it work. We just need to make sure we regroup in the next couple of days, and we haven’t had that in a while: time to rest and recover. Hopefully we’ll be energized and focused on the next game, and get a big win.”
Other players are taking responsibility for the mess they’re in (even if they’re not directly part of the cause.) Patrice Bergeron is one of those players, and he is obviously unhappy. He knows that the Bruins haven’t brought their best game every night. While players like Brad Marchand are a little more public about their frustration, Bergeron’s ire is more introspective.
“We’ve got to be accountable,” said the Bruins alternate captain on the B’s current predicament.(He’s also one of the few players that Bruins fans can agree has brought his best game almost every night to the ice). “We’re professionals – [be accountable] for yourself, and make sure you show up every night and right now, it’s about making sure we’re committed. It’s on and off and when we are doing the right thing, things are happening on the ice and when we’re not, we’re seeing what happened midway through that first till the third, so I mean, it’s definitely unacceptable right now at this stage, this point of the year, with how important the games are and the points are.”
Perhaps part of the problem was that the B’s just expected to be back in the post-season. Maybe they just figured they could cost into an eighth seed and then do their best in the playoffs. Andrew Hammond‘s miracle run as the Hamburglar of Ottawa should have shocked the Bruins out of their complacency of mediocrity. Now, they’ve got to understand that they’ve got to do everything they can to make the playoffs.
Sadly, all their hard work will now require some help from the outside. Something the team hasn’t needed in quite a few seasons.