It just seemed like the Boston Bruins weren’t entirely there last night at the TD Garden. The struggling Columbus Blue Jackets played desperate hockey, especially in the third period. They had a better net-front presence and that allowed Matt Calvert to take a hit from Carl Soderberg and beat Torey Krug and Tuukka Rask to get the go-ahead goal late in the third period. Calvert added an empty netter to give Columbus a 3-1 victory over the Black and Gold.
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The Bruins top line didn’t have much tonight for Boston. Neither David Krejci nor David Pastrnak were able to put a shot on goal during the game. The Bruins’ just didn’t to seem to have their speed and skill in this one.
“That line didn’t do much for us tonight, nobody did as a matter of fact. We need David to use his speed on the outside, we need Krech to make sure to use his speed on the outside and find him.” Bruins Head Coach Claude Julien
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“Just seemed like we weren’t really committed to doing the things that we needed to do in the hard areas in order to get that win here,” said top line forward Milan Lucic postgame. “And it ends up costing us with a loss.”
This snaps the Bruins five game win, nine game point streak. They’re only five points out of a top three playoff spot in the East. The Bruins know what they did wrong tonight. Now, it’s just a matter of reminding themselves to put in the full sixty minute effort every game.
Puck Prose
“We didn’t want to put in the dirty work,” said Julien of the team’s performance. “We were trying to be cute and they do a pretty good job; they have some pretty good D’s, and they box out well. Our guys weren’t willing to put in the work to get to the front of the net, so their goaltender saw all of the shots. Even in the battle, they won more battles than we did, so they were a more determined team than we were. I’m gonna be honest here, I’m disappointed.”
“I don’t care, six wins in a row, whatever, we just can’t afford to have those kinds of outings. Disappointed that we didn’t come to play harder than we did tonight and we wanted to take the easy way out. When we do that, we’re not successful. We’re a north-south type of team, we back-check hard, we fore-check hard, and we make things happen by taking pucks to the net. Tonight we weren’t willing to do that. When we got into the battle you could tell they wanted it more than us. We’ve gotta accept the blame, and the responsibility. We weren’t good enough, and we shouldn’t accept that.”
The Bruins now head out west to take on the Dallas Stars.