Kalman: Goaltender Gustavsson Lone Bright Spot In Bruins' Listless Loss
BOSTON (CBS) - The worst kept secret Monday at TD Garden was that the Bruins weren't going to have a lot of gas in the tank after returning Sunday from their three-games-in-four-nights road trip in Western Canada.
Few might have predicted they'd land a season-low 17 shots on Nashville backup goaltender Carter Hutton or that their only even-strength goal in a 3-2 loss would come from defenseman Kevan Miller. But everyone knew the Bruins were going to have to lean on their goaltender against the Predators.
Despite the need to have impeccable play in the crease, Bruins coach Claude Julien opted to go with his backup Jonas Gustavsson, who was pulled from his last start Friday in Calgary after allowing three goals on 11 shots, instead of Tuukka Rask.
The gambit nearly worked because Gustavsson was on top of his game most of the night with 30 saves. The 31-year-old, though, wasn't as pleased with his bounce-back effort as the stats might encourage him to be.
"Well I mean yes and no. You're never happy when you're not getting the win," Gustavsson said. "But I felt pretty good overall. But you never leave the rink happy when you lose a game because winning is what it's all about. New day tomorrow and then we'll go from there."
The Bruins' goaltending situation is enjoying a new season. Less than a year ago the Bruins ran Rask into the ground because they were in a desperate (and eventually failed) chase for the playoffs and they didn't believe in Niklas Svedberg. Gustavsson has obviously earned Julien's trust.
Gustavsson, who's now 5-2-0 with a .908 save percentage and 2.57 goals-against average in eight starts, hadn't played for nine days when he took the ice in Calgary on Friday. He didn't make it through the second minute of the second period. However, Julien wasn't completely turned off by Gustavsson's play.
"Well I didn't think Gus was that bad on Friday, and he knew that. I told him that," Julien said. "Maybe that second goal [on Friday] was probably a goal he'd like to have back, but the other two, we left the guy alone both times in front of our net. And at the same time, personally, I just felt that he didn't seem at ease as much as I'd seen him before, so I made the switch to give us a chance to win.
"But there was nothing wrong with him, so we had planned on playing him tonight, as a fresh goaltender, because we wanted Tuukka in Vancouver, and he did the job for us tonight. I think [with] the number of shots he faced and everything else, he gave us a chance."
Julien and the Bruins have to appreciate Gustavsson not just because of his stinginess in net but his refusal to grab onto any excuses.
"You can always speculate after every game, what if. You never really know," he said about whether he was rusty in his prior start. "It's such a small difference between a good game and a bad games sometimes too. Even that game, I mean if and but and all that would've happened, maybe they wouldn't have scored those three goals and you have a good game. So you can always go back and say different stuff, but if you do the same things again maybe the outcome will be different. So you've just got to believe in what you're doing is the right thing, no matter what the score is and the result is, and keep doing that because if you try to change too much of what you're doing and what you're believing in I think that's when you're in trouble."
He's played basically every third game for the Bruins, but sometimes the schedule has spread those games out to by a week or more. He's embraced the chance to be a backup to one of the best goaltenders in the League and have a chance to play a team that should at least stay competitive until April.
The rest of the Bruins could learn a lesson in not only being sharp after a long travel day but also about sticking to a plan and not looking for scapegoats.
Matt Kalman covers the Bruins for CBSBoston.com and also contributes to NHL.com and several other media outlets. Follow him on Twitter @TheBruinsBlog.