Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports
If only playoff games were just half a minute long, the Boston Bruins would be able to win every time. If it came down to a few seconds’ worth of sloppy scrambling in front of the net, following 59 minutes’ worth of forgetting how to play their own game in such an agonizing fashion, then actually this game would probably have never happened. They would’ve been able to close it out in five, string together three good games in a row, but instead they’re staring at an elimination game seven after possibly the most pathetic playoff showing in quite some time, a 2-1 loss that sounds a lot better in numbers than it was to watch.
This loss has the series completely evened, a do-or-die tomorrow night back in Boston, a team that is starving for glory chomping at the bit and honestly, truly looking like the better team. The Toronto Maple Leafs are hungry. The Bruins are toothless and complacent. Almost all of them already have at least one ring, so why bother anymore, right? At least that’s how they looked out there tonight, playing in their second chance to finish this off and have a small bit of rest before the next round. There was no passion, no fire, no desire to win.
Maybe an early power play was a microcosm of the Bruins’ tempo this game: not a single shot on goal. Not even one. The other bookend of this terrible performance was at the very end of the game, Bruins in the zone, Zdeno Chara as open as a 24-hour convenience store and yet unwilling to try one of his three-digit slapshots and at least attempt to beat James Reimer.
This game was a mess, a litany of flubbed passes, missed opportunities, rebounds never taken advantage of, defensive errors, forwards further retreating into the shadows of themselves they’ve become (paging numbers 19, 63, 23, 49–I could go on and on, but those four have really stuck out because they actually haven’t stuck out in the good way) and so on.
For the entire first 40 minutes, Tuukka Rask was the only reason the score stayed even at zero. Of course, when the game ended, some reporter decided to ask him about how this series was like the infamous collapse in the 2010 playoffs, where he was in net. He respectfully declined to answer that stupid question.
But then the third period saw yet another Bruins collapse–a concept so well-worn that they ought to apply for a patent of it. The team deflated like a balloon when Dion Phaneuf put one away less than two minutes into the final period, but then really got lost at sea when Phil Kessel made it two-all before the midway point. As predicted, this lit a fire of delightfully illogical chants among the hungry Air Canada Centre crowd.
Milan Lucic scoring after a net-front scramble (an ideal way to score goals, not that this team knows it) was the only thing keeping Reimer from a shutout.
The post-game excuses are pretty run-of-the-mill and include the word frustration, but what’s supremely frustrating is hearing coach Claude Julien‘s take on it. He won’t talk about his lines or their lack of ability to score and he prefers to explain his team as being a Jekyll and Hyde club through this entire shortened season.
Wow, couching your team’s inconsistencies by comparing them to a book about a person with a severe dissociative identity disorder, and then running with that identification for the whole season, is really productive and not at all tone-deaf. Why not explore why they look so Jekyll and Hyde-ish the first time that thought comes to your mind, then working hard to make it so there’s more Jekyll and much less Hyde? Remember when Full 60 to History was their identity?
The news just gets better for this team post-loss: due to a plane mechanical issue, they’re flying back to Boston tomorrow morning. Who knows what to expect from this team tomorrow night?
