Kalman: Bruins' Record At Home Wrecking Chance At Better Positioning

BOSTON (CBS) - The Bruins capped their 4-2-0 road trip with a riveting 7-3 victory against Dallas on Saturday and arrived home around 4 a.m. Sunday.

The road trip, their longest of the season, included at least one day off before each game and they only went one time zone to the west. As we all know, NHL players travel in a giant hotel room in the sky, as the days of flying coach have gone the way of the wooden stick.

Yet two days after knocking off the Stars, who were third in the NHL overall standings, the Bruins continued their inexplicable struggles at home with a 6-4 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets (14th in the Eastern Conference) Tuesday at TD Garden.

Boston is 20-7-3 and 12-15-3 at home. If the Bruins, who trail the Florida Panthers by five points for first place in the Atlantic Division were even .500 at home, they'd at least be even with the Panthers at this point.

"Exactly. So when you look at that, that should be enough fuel for the fire to be able to get you going," defenseman Joe Morrow said. "But lately it's not, so that's got to change."

The Bruins had breakdowns in the neutral and defensive zones all night. They were outshot 35-30, they were out-attempted at 5-on-5, 53-42 (according to war-on-ice.com), and the Blue Jackets even hit the post four times. Boston had enough gas at the end to score a 6-on-5 goal to pull within one, but Dalton Prout ended the Bruins' comeback dreams with a 179-foot empty-net goal.

Despite their late rally, coach Claude Julien blamed fatigue for his team's failure coming off one of its best performances of the season Saturday.

"Defensively we need to be better and we scored enough to win, but we didn't do a good job there. I think that was probably the thing that cost us the most tonight because I think deep down the guys are trying," Julien said. "There's the element of fatigue that sets in. We tried to overcome that and I thought they tried to work hard, but I think mentally some of the decision-making tonight defensively was not good enough."

Julien backed up his talk of tiredness by cancelling practice that was scheduled for Tuesday. But to a man the players weren't taking their coach's lifeline. They were energetic enough to answer back from two one-goal deficits early and then pull within one goal late. They attempted 56 shots and were credited with 24 hits.

"You don't want to make any excuses though," said forward Matt Beleskey, who scored twice. "We had yesterday off, lots of time to rest. So we needed to be ready to play and I think we came out all right in the first and in the second we kind of had a little letdown. It's tough to get back from."

Said Morrow: "I don't think fatigue was a factor today just because of what player have been through, everybody's been through it. Everybody's gotten in at 4 o'clock in the morning and has to prepare. You have a full day to prepare for this game after that happens, so it's really no excuse. It's just something that has to be figured out with our performances at home. But if I could put a finger on it, clearly I'd change it."

The repeated cliché among professional athletes in response to a question that's difficult to answer these days goes something like "if we knew how to fix it, we would." That's a cop out. Several Bruins went to that go-to line to explain the home-road split, but Loui Eriksson, who also scored twice against Columbus, was able to diagnose the problem pretty well.

"I think we play a much better game style when we're on the road," he said. "We keep it simple and we play it hard and not giving that many chances to other teams. It was another disappointing game to give up so many goals that we did and lose tonight with it."

The Bruins are costing themselves the division and possibly first-round home-ice advantage with their putrid play at home. The pathetic nature of other teams in the playoff race, and the Bruins' strong play away from home, will probably keep Boston among the top eight in the East when mid-April rolls around. As flawed as the Bruins are, their mistakes at home are correctable and they should at least be able to beat teams like Columbus and Toronto when in a friendly environment. More home struggles might reduce them from mediocre to pathetic and put them behind less-talented teams in the standings and turn this rebuilding season into a failure.

Some teams that struggle at home for a while but play well on the road try to duplicate the atmosphere and routine they have on the road. Some even stay in hotels at home.

"I don't know if you want to stay in anymore hotels after an 11-day trip," Beleskey said. "I just think we've got to bear down. We've got to stay there mentally and as a professional this should be where you want to play at home. I think we need to get that group going and start rolling with it."

Good news for the Bruins, they get another chance to prove themselves at home against Pittsburgh on Wednesday. Julien said he wouldn't discuss the Bruins' home struggles in depth until after he sees how the team plays against the Penguins. If he's lucky, he'll be celebrating a victory and not lamenting another loss.

Matt Kalman covers the Bruins for CBSBoston.com and also contributes to NHL.com and several other media outlets. Follow him on Twitter @TheBruinsBlog.