February 6, 2010
by Douglas Flynn/
Vancouver's Mark Rypien (37) belts Miroslav Satan into the boards. (photo: Getty)
BOSTON – Is there any way left for the Bruins to see a win slip away from them?
In the long list of improbable ways to cough up a lead, the combination of a broken stick, a bad hop and an unlikely tip off the shaft of a stick will be a hard one to top. But that’s exactly the strange convergence of events that doomed Boston to its 10th straight defeat Saturday afternoon at the Garden.
With the Bruins clinging to a 2-1 lead with just under five minutes to play in the third period, Vancouver defenseman Sami Salo shattered his stick attempting a slap shot at the right point. The puck slipped right to Milan Lucic, who had nothing up open ice in front of him all the way into the Canucks zone.
But Lucic overskated the puck, and Vancouver’s Tanner Glass pounced on the loose puck just inside the blue line, turned and fired a shot toward the Bruins net. Pavol Demitra, left all alone out front as the Bruins transitioned to the attack, redirected it home off the shaft of his stick to tie the game with 4:42 left.
It stayed that way until Demitra scored the only goal in the shootout to lift Vancouver to the 3-2 victory, while Boston’s losing streak hit double digits.
“I really thought that we were playing well enough in the third that we could have won that game 2-1,” said Bruins coach Claude Julien. “And when Looch overskated that puck and they turned around and just threw it at the net, that was one of those things where you just say, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. Give us a break here.’”
The Bruins haven’t gotten any breaks of late. They’ve now fallen to 0-6-4 in their last 10, 1-9-4 in their last 14 and 0-6-3 in their last nine home games. They haven’t won a game at the Garden in 2010.
And for the third straight game, they’ve squandered an early lead when they’ve been unable to put away a team. On Tuesday, they were up 1-0 on Washington, only to see the Capitals score four unanswered goals despite the Bruins outshooting them 42-26. On Thursday, they went up 2-0 on Montreal and outshot the Habs 47-25, only to lose 3-2 in a shootout. Saturday, it was another 2-0 lead erased despite a 43-31 shot advantage.
“I guess we have been losing leads,” said defenseman Dennis Wideman. “It’s not being able to put teams away. When we get a goal or two goals, we have so many scoring chances that if we would have scored on a couple more of those chances, it would have been 4-0. That’s the main thing.”
Those goals haven’t come for the Bruins despite the way they’ve been piling up shots. Boston has not scored more than two goals in a game in the last nine games.
“The same story I guess,” said forward Michael Ryder. “Still, we did a lot of good things today. We threw pucks at the net and had good puck possession. That was something we wanted to get better at and we’re getting more shots and getting more chances. We just have to stick with it right now and find ways to get a few wins and try to get on a little roll.”
Linemate Blake Wheeler attempted to stay positive as well.
“You can’t gauge yourself just on scoring goals,” said Wheeler. “Because then you’re going to start cheating all over the ice and not do the things you’re supposed to be doing. We’re doing everything right except getting the puck in the net. If we keep doing that we’ll start scoring goals. There’s no doubt about it.”
The Bruins were able to score early. Zdeno Chara tallied a power-play goal just 1:56 into the first when he drove to the net and banged in a pass from Marco Sturm. Ryder then added another power-play strike when he tipped in a Marc Savard shot at 14:20 of the first. But despite their best efforts, the Bruins couldn’t extend the lead to a more comfortable margin.
“I don’t think we sat back at all,” said Julien. “We kept going at these guys and we had some real good quality chances to make it 3-0. It’s not because of a lack of confidence or saying, ‘Oh boy, we’ve got a 2-0 lead, let’s hang on to it, let’s sit back.’ We’re doing the things we should. And normally you’ll get that chance to make it 3-0 and it’s just not happening.”
The Bruins kept pressing, outshooting Vancouver 12-5 in the second, but the Canucks came away with the only goal. Ryan Kesler dropped a backhand pass from behind the net out to Mason Raymond, who roofed a wrist shot to make it 2-1 at 8:51. Suddenly the Bruins could start feeling the pressure again.
“As a line, it was probably one of our best games,” said Lucic, who teams with Savard and Miroslav Satan to create a number of scoring bids. “We were able to create some scoring chances. In the end we didn’t get any results. It just seems we can’t find a way to get that third one to put teams away. We let teams just hang in there and hang in there and the other team always seems to come out on top.”
Vancouver did that when a broken stick – and a broken play – led to the tying goal.
“I tried to stop it with my skate, but I didn’t get it,” said Lucic. “Bad luck, the story of my season. Nothing can go right.”
While the Bruins are trying to stay upbeat, there are certainly cracks in their confidence starting to show.
“It’s disheartening, that’s the only word for it,” said Savard. “You watch that last goal. I mean the guy breaks his stick, Looch should be off on either a breakaway or a 2-on-1 but it skips past his skate and their guy turns and fires and they get a tip in front. And it wasn’t even a clean tip. It hit like his shaft or something.
“We don’t have any answers,” added Savard. “We don’t have excuses either. We haven’t made any excuses. We’re just trying our best and hopefully on this trip we can get away and get some wins before the Olympic break.”
The Bruins don’t return home again until March, but they have four more chances on the road to get something positive going before the Olympic break.
“We’re playing as well as we’ve played in a long while,” said Wheeler. “You’ve just got to stick with it. Pretty soon the puck will start going in off shin pads, all the things you see all the time in hockey. Hopefully that day is coming sooner rather than later.”
Douglas Flynn can be reached at dflynn@hockeyjournal.com.
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