Boston Bruins Can Escape Road Trip With Four of Six Possible Points By Beating The Vancouver Canucks On The Road
The Boston Bruins are set to take on the Vancouver Canucks to close out their three-game road trip. Unfortunately for the Bruins, they dropped the previous two games to the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames in a shootout, and in overtime respectively. While the Bruins didn’t leave either game empty handed, collecting two out of a possible four points, the road trip can be deemed wildly unsuccessful so far. The Bruins have had multiple issues with turnovers this season, and those troubles continued in Calgary on Friday night when the first goal of the game was the result of a rare Zdeno Chara giveaway. To make matters worse, the goal came just 33 seconds into the game which wasn’t how the Bruins envisioned that game starting. The Bruins didn’t let the goal drain their morale, however, and competed hard for the entire game.
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“I thought that we were better,” said Zdeno Chara. “The effort was better, we worked hard. That part of the game was much better. We got a point out of it, but also, we lost a point. So it depends how you look at it.” The Bruins competed hard, and ultimately did escape with one point, however, if they would have played tighter defensively, they might be sitting with three points in their four games instead of only two. Reminiscent of last season, the Flames scored a goal with less than three seconds remaining — last season they scored to win the game with 2.4 seconds remaining in overtime.
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While the Bruins didn’t let the first goal totally deflate them, the Flames did score the second goal of the game only a few minutes after scoring their first, which has spelled instant doom for the Bruins so far this season as they are win-less when going down 2-0 in any game this season. “I thought that second goal was probably a tough one,” Bruins head coach Claude Julien said following the game. “The first shot, we left (Gaudreau) alone there in front of the net. But we had to shake things up there a little bit. I thought we were a little bit flat, and I wanted our team to pick it up.” Claude Julien also felt the power play opportunities might have had something to do with the final result of the game.
“Personally, I thought we should have had a few more power plays,” Julien said. “I think at one point, Vatrano took a stick in the face there, was bleeding and should have had a four-minute power play, and that might have helped us a little bit.” The Bruins ended the game with ten penalty minutes in comparison to the Flames two, and as Claude Julien mentioned, the Bruins were probably supposed to receive more power play chances than they did.
The Bruins are set to close out their road trip against the Vancouver Canucks and they will look to escape the road trip with four of a possible six points, which isn’t all that bad, all things considered.
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