Okay so in the grand scheme of things, tonight’s loss is nothing to cry myself to sleep over. Yeah, the Bruins essentially lost out on what most expected to be 2 free points, but sadly you can’t win them all, and while this was an EXTREMELY winnable game for the B’s to the point of “oh my God I am going to scream on the top of my lungs out of pure frustration,” in the end the Bruins deserved to lose that game.
Coming into tonight, the Red Wings had gone 1-11-1 in their last 13 games. In other words, the Red Wings stink, in case anyone was not already aware. Coming off a tough loss in Montreal Tuesday night that ended the Bruins’ win streak at 6, the hope was for a well-rested team ready to get back on track with a win against Detroit. Instead, we got some real uninspired hockey from Boston.
The good news is, Tuukka looked a lot better in the net than he did Tuesday. Though I was not necessarily worried after his less than stellar game in Montreal, especially given how impeccable he’s been so far this season, tonight was a reassuring performance from him. While the Red Wings were able to capitalize on power plays after some sloppy penalties for goals, Tuukka was not so much of the problem as his defensemen were. The Bruins’ defense the last 4 games or so has looked rather questionable, and tonight with some pairing changes in order to help Charlie McAvoy open himself up more on offense, they looked especially flat. While McAvoy did find himself a lot more active offensively tonight, with a couple really smart shifts from him in particular, unfortunately it would seem the Chara – Clifton and Grzelcyk – McAvoy pairings are most likely not ones we will be seeing regularly after tonight’s game. Detroit’s offense was able to completely dominate the zone with little disturbance from a rather soft defense. Overall, just an underwhelming performance by the Bruins’ defense.
There was some changes offensively tonight as well, and by changes I mean absolute ANARCHY. With DeBrusk and Ritchie both out for tonight’s game, it was known the lines would look a bit different than usual, however by the middle of the game, the Kuraly line in particular just turned into a revolving door, with Cassidy putting in any combination possible to try and get something going offensively. Oddly enough, Steven Kampfer was put in the lineup and given zero time on the ice. Perhaps it would’ve been worth it to at least give him a chance with Kuraly and Wagner to see if the three could’ve made anything happen. The same can be said for Zach Senyshyn who had just 7:58 TOI. In his brief time on the ice tonight, Senyshyn yet again showed solid effort and a lot of potential. On a night like tonight where most of the team seemed rather uninspired and unfocused, it might have been worth it to give Senyshyn some more time on the ice.
That being said, if there was one person who certainly was not uninspired tonight it was Brad Marchand. Marchand was feeling feisty as HECK tonight. In his first fight of the season against Filip Hronek in the second period, Marchand tried his very best to fire up his teammates and hopefully get a spark going underneath them. While it wasn’t exactly a fight I’ll probably ever look up on YouTube, the impression was it was more of a symbolic measure than anything else. Sophia Jurksztowicz asked defenseman Torey Krug about Marchand’s fight after the second period and Krug said, while the team as a whole was playing rather flat, it was nice to see Marchand at least showed up.
Unfortunately it appeared tonight just wasn’t the Bruins’ night. It’s important to go into every game with the same mindset, no matter what a team’s record is. Cassidy even made note of that in yesterday’s pre-game conference, noting that the Bruins dropped 3 out of 4 games against the Red Wings last season. So while we can all weep about what a bad game that was by Boston against a bad team, hopefully it’ll be a lesson learned for the team and something they can build off of for the future. Again, in the grand scheme of things it’s not the end of the world. It’s early November, the Bruins are still at the top of their division, and if you’re really that concerned, the Bruins play the Red Wings again February 9th. It’ll all be okay.
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