Boston Bruins Still A Little Rusty In Loss To Canadiens
Nothing says ‘old time hockey’ like having the Boston Bruins and the Montreal Canadiens go a few rounds with each other.
The Boston Bruins headed off to neutral territory tonight to take on their ancient rivals, the Montreal Canadiens. The Bruins put up some early heat, but the B’s fell back on familiar patterns. They gave up a power play goal that tied it up at the beginning of the third (just 18 seconds after the Bruins retook the lead). The Bruins The loss brings the Bruins to 2-2-1 on the preseason.
The Bruins and the Canadiens played at Quebec City’s Videotron Centre (The future home of the Quebec Nordiques. Hopefully, Gary Bettman will take a few minutes from the next disaster in the desert and remember that Canadians should have another team in the NHL).
“It was a pretty intense hockey game, but at the same time I just felt that it was an exhibition game by the way we played, lots of mistakes tonight,” offered Head Coach Claude Julien. “Can certainly tell that some guys are tired and some guys are rusty.
“This is why preseason becomes important for us to clean off those things and give some guys some reps to make sure they get better.
“There are things as a team that you want to correct so that you can minimize them going forward.”
Bruins captain Zdeno Chara attempted a pass out of the B’s defensive zone that was picked off, and the Habs pushed in the game winner with under five minutes in regulation.
Tuukka Rask stopped 22 of 26 shots on goal. Kevan Miller left the game with a lower body injury. At the moment, he’s listed as day-to-day.
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to the trainers,” said Julien postgame. “Probably in the regular season he could have been back and right now it was just a matter of making the right decisions.
“We’ll see. They’ll reevaluate him back home and we’ll go day-to-day for now, I guess.”
Getting hit in the kneecap with a puck isn’t pleasant. If the injury is severe enough, it practically guarantees Colin Miller a spot in the opening night lineup. The only obstacle to that would be if the Bruins decided to sign veteran blueliner Christian Ehrhoff (currently on a PTO contract) to the squad.
Ehrhoff was certainly shaking off the rust on Tuesday, but he played a decent game against the Canadiens. Ehrhoff tallied the Bruins second goal of the night against Canadiens’ backup netminder Al Montoya.
“I felt pretty good,” Ehrhoff said to the media postgame. “Third period, there were a couple plays I wish I could do over again, but every game goes like that I think.
“There’s obviously a few things system-wise that I’ve got to improve on and I’ll take the next couple days to do that.”
The 34-year old German defenseman has become the new dark horse in the running for one of the spots on the Bruins blueline. (In a way, it would be very Don Sweeney to kick out one 30+ German defenseman and swap him out for another.) It’s likely the front office will keep him on the roster for now, especially after Kevan Miller’s injury.
While Coach Julien was pleased with Ehrhoff’s debut, he wasn’t ready to declare for him one way or the other.
“It was one of those games where we’ll take the time to evaluate him,” said Julien of Ehrhoff. “He did score a big goal, but at the same time we went down to five D’s pretty early there, so some of our D’s you could tell by the second half of the game.”
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The Boston Bruins will now head down to Columbus for another preseason tilt against the Blue Jackets on Thursday.