Kalman: Someone, Maybe Even The Coach, Is Going To Pay The Price If Bruins Can't Get Consistent
BOSTON (CBS) -- The Bruins were set up to ride a three-game winning streak into their showdown with the Chicago Blackhawks on Friday after they beat the Philadelphia Flyers 6-3 on Saturday.
The Eastern Conference's last-place New York Islanders provided the opposition on Monday. The Bruins visit the Detroit Red Wings, who've been in and out of the Atlantic Division basement lately, on Wednesday.
The Bruins haven't won three in a row since Dec. 1-5, but considering their win against the Flyers was their third in five games (3-1-1) and that stretch also included impressive road wins against St. Louis and Florida, it looked like the Bruins were hitting their groove.
But then the puck dropped at TD Garden for the Martin Luther King Jr. matinee and the Bruins once again let any momentum they've built lately slide down the Causeway Street sewer.
The Bruins were shut out 4-0 by Islander goaltender Thomas Greiss, who allowed seven goals in a loss to Carolina on Saturday. They let New York forward Nikolay Kulemin score two goals and tough guy Casey Cizikas dish for two assists. The Islanders scored their first three goals during a span of 5:20 in the second period.
All the while the Bruins put up little resistance and once again made a last-place team into a world beater. Bruins coach Claude Julien said he wasn't going to make excuses, but he brought up the condensed schedule and possible fatigue. Sorry, coach, but that's an excuse.
The Bruins players who faced the music after the game didn't stoop to such lows.
"The game was pretty even until that six minutes," Bruins forward David Backes said. "I don't know if we just wanted to hit simulate on old video game today because we figured had more points than them, it was just going to come or what. But the result was certainly not something we were looking for when we just established ourselves back to .500 at home and wanted to make this a tough place for anyone to come into. We just didn't bring it tonight and that's unacceptable on all of our parts."
The Islanders may be uniquely horrible, especially when they start the game without veteran forward Andrew Ladd and Cal Clutterbuck, but they're not unique among teams that are lottery bound who've found the Bruins to be easy marks. This was the Islanders' second win in Boston and the Colorado Avalanche and New Jersey Devils have also exploited the flaw in the Bruins that makes them play down, and below, the competition.
You would think by now the Bruins would've learned their lesson, but they haven't.
"Claude mentioned that before the game because last game we played here they got us and it was a bit of a flat game again last time," said goaltender Tuukka Rask, who was spared playing in the third period behind his zombie teammates by Julien. "We just woke up too late. Today we definitely didn't want to underestimate them because any team in this league is good even though the standings might show otherwise. We just never got going."
The Bruins are 7-11-4 in games following wins and they've only put together back-to-back wins once since their last three-game winning streak. The flashes of greatness are something to brag about, whether it's the triumph up in Montreal or that road win against the Blues. But the losses to last-place teams and the defeats on home ice (the Bruins are now 10-11-0 at the Garden), make you question everything you know about hockey and the Bruins.
They also make you wonder where the blame is ultimately going to fall if the teams behind the Bruins win enough of their games in hand to knock Boston from the postseason picture, and the losses to teams that don't necessarily want to win, less they drop in the lottery ranking, combine to spoil this season.
Julien chose to not undress his players publicly. He rarely does. All the Bruins players who spoke postgame used words like "inexcusable" and "unacceptable" to describe the way they played and to sum up what the message was from Julien.
To give Julien the benefit of the doubt, maybe he was thinking out loud when he brought up fatigue. It's Julien and his staff's job to know when the team needs a break and the Bruins have practiced almost every off day for more than a week. It's also up to the coaching staff to get the team prepared, regardless of the quality of opponent. Something obviously has to change behind the scenes as much as on the ice. Maybe Julien knows that as flawed as his roster is and as inconsistent as his veteran leaders are, when too many points have slipped away, the coach pays the price.
With a game every other night until the All-Star break at the end of the month, the Bruins have plenty of time to get their act together and rebuild the momentum from last week.
"If we want to play the way we did against St. Louis or against Philly in here, we're going to win a lot of games," Backes said. "We just can't be Jekyll & Hyde and black and white on different days because that's as frustrating as it gets."
The frustration could boil over if the Bruins don't get consistent soon.