Boston Bruins: Post-Mortem on The 4-2 Loss To The Habs
The Boston Bruins played some seriously sloppy hockey when the Montreal Canadiens came to town. Their 4-2 victory marks the ninth straight win the Habs have gotten in the TD Garden.
The Boston Bruins could have come to the game tonight loaded to bear and be ready to push the Canadiens out of their house. Instead, the B’s did nothing but have an ugly second period meltdown that caused the Bruins to (once again) play from behind. The Black and Gold couldn’t catch up to the Habs, and Montreal walked away from TD Garden with yet another win, beating the Bruins 4-2.
The Bruins haven’t managed a home win against the Canadiens since January, 2012.
Naturally, most people want to lay the blame at the feet of backup netminder Anton Khudobin. (To be fair, I was expecting a Bruins loss without Tuukka Rask in net, but I was expecting the failure to be on Khudobin’s part, and not the team in general.) Khudobin did the best he could with a team that had some seriously terrible defensive lapses.
The Khazak goaltender put up 25 saves in the loss. To be completely fair, he did the best job he could with a Bruins team that let him down during the game.
“Anton [Khudobin] gave us a chance to win for the longest of time,” said Bruins Head Coach Claude Julien in defense of his netminder. “I don’t think we helped him at the other end of it, but he made the saves that he had to make. Some of the mistakes, breakaways and that kind of stuff, we know better than to give those.”
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There was plenty of blame to be tossed around here. Players missed their assignments. The defense looked more like last year’s Bruins than this season’s team. Claude Julien was blunt about the team’s performance after the game.
“We just lost a game here, so now we’re trying to pick on players,” said the Bruins bench boss. “We lost this game tonight because we didn’t play well enough. We made mistakes that were too costly, and when you give up four goals to Montreal, and you have [Carey] Price at the other end, it’s pretty hard to beat that team,.
“So we needed to be better. I think overall, in a lot of those areas where we, like I said, we shot ourselves in the foot with some real poor mistakes. We can’t afford to do that against the Montreal Canadiens.”
Some players laid the blame solely at their own feet. Torey Krug was one of them. Krug allowed Canadiens forward Paul Byron to fly past him and get a short-handed goal. He also didn’t look good with Joe Morrow while playing on his off-side. He finished a -3 for the game.
“There’s no consistency in my game for whatever reason,” said Krug of his poor play. “I’ve gotta make sure I’m working to get better, so that my teammates can count on me every single shift. It’s not there right now, and I’ll take the blame for that. I’ve just got to work through it.
“I have no consistency to my game at all. I make a good play and the next shift it’s a poor play. It’s not something I’m proud of at the moment, but I’ll work through it. I always have. There’s always times during the season when you play poorly and you have to work through it. Unfortunately for me it’s the start of the season, but I’ll get back to a place where my teammates can’t count on me every time I jump over the boards.”
Next: Sitting Tuukka Rask Is A Bad Idea
The Bruins will just have to learn from this bad game and make the appropriate adjustments. The loss keeps them at six points, placing them fifth in the Atlantic Division. The team will now regroup and prepare for the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday.