Bruce Cassidy Rips Bruins After Lackluster Showing In Loss To Flames: 'Didn't Even Break A Sweat, Some Of 'Em'
BOSTON (CBS) -- The Bruins are 39-13-12. They're 21-3-9 on home ice. They have the most points in the NHL, and they have a five-point lead over the next-best team.
In the big picture, the Bruins are sitting pretty. But in the smaller picture, they've lost two straight games, by a combined score of 14-5. And head coach Bruce Cassidy is not liking what he's been seeing.
The head coach -- who's never afraid to speak honestly -- wasted no time in ripping the effort level of some of his players after Tuesday night's 5-2 home loss to the Calgary Flames.
"Well, uh, clearly not good enough," Cassidy responded to the first question of his press conference, which centered on his team's "overall effort" vs. Calgary. "I thought some guys came to play and some guys … didn't. Didn't break a sweat, some of 'em, it looked like. I'm sure their effort was there, they were trying. They were just in between, couldn't execute, or whatever. But at the end of the day it wasn't good enough."
The Bruins were kept off the scoreboard through the first 30 minutes, until Brad Marchand scored on a shorthanded partial breakaway. Trailing 3-1 entering the third period, the Bruins mustered just seven shots on goal in the final 20 minutes, scoring with just under seven minutes remaining but giving up a back-breaking goal in the final minutes.
Marchand generally agreed with his coach's assessment.
"Yeah we weren't at our best for sure. We didn't have it all the way through the game. We were a little bit sleepy, I guess, at times. Just not our normal, upbeat, high-energy game," Marchand said. "But it's going to happen in an 82-game schedule. We're not going to be perfect. Unfortunately we didn't get this one, but there's lots left."
Cassidy blamed some stubborn decisions by his D-men for the Bruins' lack of offensive opportunities.
"We had a tough time, and some of that's on our D. I thought we were pretty stubborn, turning pucks over in the middle of the ice," Cassidy said. "We have some forwards that are risk-reward, and we live with that with certain guys, we know that can happen at the other end. I just thought against a team that's kind of playing a passive 1-2-2 in the neutral zone, we were stubborn. We kept wanting to put the puck in the middle of the ice, and it wasn't there, and it came back on us, and we paid the price."
Later, Cassidy noted: "Where you gotta take advantage of [the Flames] is in their end and manage pucks and sort of wear them down, and we weren't able to do that at all."
The coach also switched up his lines, moving newcomer Nick Ritchie up to David Krejci's line, and sliding Jake DeBrusk down to Charlie Coyle's line.
"I didn't see much energy, much offense, much willingness to recover pucks. The Coyle line had a rare off night, they're just fighting it, so you just try to kind of mix it up a little bit," Cassidy said. "Krejci and DeBrusk haven't produced a whole lot lately, so it's just get a guy away from a guy for a while, see if that loosens him up. Sometimes it work; tonight it did not."
As for the performance of Ritchie in his Bruins debut (0 points, 0 shots, minus-2 rating, 7 hits in 14:17), Cassidy opted to assess the work of his entire team rather than just one player who arrived in Boston the night before.
"I thought he was fine. I'm not going to judge him on a … he flew in here [Monday], and he has to get acclimated. There has to be a decent amount of period before we see what we got, and then go from there," Cassidy said. "I'd rather not -- I'd rather watch some tape, see did he finish checks, did he get inside, some of the details that he's going to bring to us. I'd rather look at the whole group, and we just did not have our A game. The guys that we rely on to play well had a tougher time tonight, and it kind of showed up in the end."
In their first opportunity to wipe away the sourness of their 9-3 loss in Vancouver from Saturday night, the Bruins didn't exactly make the most of it. With a fairly hot Stars team (7-2-1 in their last 10, winners of three of their last four) visiting Boston on Thursday, Cassidy made it quite clear that he will be expecting a better showing.