As the Boston Bruins battle for a playoff spot with several other wildcard hopeful teams, they found themselves facing a Toronto Maple Leafs team that was without their captain, Auston Matthews, was on a three-game losing streak, and had lost four of their last five games. The Bruins, on the other hand, were coming off back-to-back wins, including a gutsy 4-2 victory in Detroit Saturday night, in a game with massive playoff implications.
Surely, this meant that the Bruins were riding high entering Tuesday's game and would be able to ride that wave to a victory at home against Toronto... right?
Wrong. The Bruins jumped out to an early lead before completely falling apart for the rest of the game. Through sheer dumb luck, and despite their best efforts to mess it up, the Bruins managed to pick up a singular power play goal in five attempts. Let's start there, shall we?
Bruins fall in embarrassing loss to Maple Leafs
As my colleague, Aaron Clancy, pointed out last week, the Bruins had the third-best power play in the NHL going into the Olympic break. They have now dropped to 8th, and are sitting at an abysmal 14.6% since February 26th. To their credit, the Bruins now have a PP goal in three of their last four games, with just a single unsuccessful opportunity against Winnipeg last Thursday, but the unit still seems uninspired.
If you bet your friend every rush that the Bruins would take the puck out of their zone with a defenseman, who would promptly pivot at the defensive blue line and drop a pass back to a streaking forward, followed by all five players standing at the offensive blue line entering the zone at the same time, you would probably win over 90% of the time.
While the Bruins' zone entry strategy worked out for the most part against the Leafs in terms of getting in cleanly, it lacked any sense of threat and allowed the penalty killing unit to predict where the puck would be every time. Once in the zone, the Bruins looked equally uninspired.
They did a decent job of utilizing the outside of the zone and the space below the goal line, but they routinely forced passes to the middle of the ice, which were easily blocked by penalty killers in the slot. The poor passing combined with ill-timed pinches, and poor blue line play from Mason Lohrei in particular led to easy clears for the Leafs and even a shorthanded goal. Lohrei was sat early in the season for poor play, and I think it is about time that Hampus Lindholm slots in to run the second PP unit for Boston.
The poor defending and passing carried over into full-strength play as well, with errant passes sent through the neutral zone to no one and a general lack of awareness on display in the offensive zone. This Bruins team should make the playoffs, mainly because Jeremy Swayman (.931 save percentage this month) is dragging them there, but also because the talent clearly exists. The Bruins are 6-1-2 in March against teams within six points of a playoff spot as of Tuesday night.
They can clearly compete against quality teams. The issue is that, in that same month of March, the Bruins are 0-2-1 against teams clear out of the playoff picture. If the Bruins had those five extra points they threw away, they would be at 92, just one behind the Tampa Bay Lightning for second in the Atlantic Division, and just three behind the Buffalo Sabres for the division lead.
I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, saying that the Bruins should be fighting for the regular-season division title. What I am saying is that this team is capable of much, much more than they are currently showing, and losing to the Toronto Maple Leafs, who are currently a sorry excuse for a hockey team with a legitimate chance at the number one overall pick, should be the kick in the butt that propels the B's into the playoffs.