Going into the three-day holiday break, the Boston Bruins dropped four out of five games, going 1-3-1 with a loss to the Vancouver Canucks in a shootout, mixed in with three regulation losses. There was no shortage of blame to go around for the failures on the homestand, from the players to head coach Marco Sturm.
In the end, Sturm's playing days are over, and it's up to the players on the ice to perform, and not all of them are doing so. Several players need to turn things around, and here are three that must perform better coming out of the break.
Joonas Korpisalo
Last year, as the season was coming to a close, Joonas Korpisalo was not happy with his playing time and made his feelings known. General manager Don Sweeney decided over the offseason to keep him and run it back as Jermey Swayman's backup. It's been a rough season so far for Korpisalo.
In 27 games last season, Korpisalo went 11-10-3 with a 2.90 goals against average and a .893 save percentage with three shutouts. This season, he has gone 6-7-0 in 14 games with a 3.63 GAA and a .880 SV%. He was pulled on Sunday night in a 6-2 loss to the Ottawa Senators after allowing five goals in 20 minutes.
Sure, it's easy to blame Sturm for Swayman's heavy workload, but Korpisalo needs to be better when he plays. If things don't get better, Sturm and the front office have some decisions to make.
Andrew Peeke
This season has been an up-and-down for defenseman Andrew Peeke, but recently it has been a lot more down than up. In December alone, he has a mind-boggling plus/minus of minus-12. And that's coming with all three of his goals being scored this month.
Talk about struggling on your own defensive end. A lot of defensemen would not be in the lineup with that goal differential, but Sturm's hands are tied with several injuries to defensemen. There really isn't a choice other than to play Peeke, but he needs to turn things around sooner rather than later.
Mason Lohrei
It falls on more than Swayman and Korpisalo in terms of keeping the puck out of the net. Young defenseman Mason Lohrei is struggling right now and hasn't helped the cause in the defensive end. He has had some key turnovers in the defensive end that have ended up in the back of the net.
He made a costly mistake against the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday night that led to the game's first goal, but a couple of shifts later, he made a great play pinching in offensively and made a beautiful cross-ice pass to Marat Khusnutdinov to tie the game. He has shown flashes at times, but he's making the same mistakes in all three zones that he made last season. He was scratched earlier this year, but injuries forced him back into the lineup, and they are going to keep him in there until the unit is healthy.