Ten reasons why the Bruins lost to Panthers
BOSTON -- The Bruins lost. Surely you've heard.
It's not ideal.
For a team that had its sights set on a playoff run through June and a duck boat parade through the streets of Boston, Sunday's Game 7 overtime loss was a crash landing. There's no question that this first-round exit was a massive underachievement for a team that set regular-season records for wins (65) and points (135), with the only space left for debate centering on where this failure ranks on the all-time list. (The 2019 Lightning getting swept by the Blue Jackets may still hold the crown for recent collapses, though the dust hasn't yet settled on this one.) Some have likened the loss to the undefeated Patriots losing Super Bowl XLII, but it's more like the undefeated Patriots losing in the divisional round of the playoffs. At home. To the Jacksonville Jaguars.
It's left everybody a bit stunned, to say the least. But with the initial shock now past, here's a quick(ish) look at how the Bruins lost to the Panthers after leading 3-1 in the series and after holding third-period leads in both Game 6 and Game 7.
Matthew Tkachuk Outgreased Them
Matthew Tkachuk was, quite simply, the star of the series.
He scored five goals and tallied six assists for 11 points in the seven games, including an assist on the series-winning goal in OT, when he was also perfectly screening the goaltender. He scored the OT winner in Game 5, he scored a between-the-legs highlight-reel goal, and he won the series-clinching puck battle behind the net before the Carter Verhaeghe dagger.
He also came as advertised in terms of between-whistle agitation, to the point where he got a goalie to try to fight him. He played a physical game and he also hit the deck a couple of times to draw penalties in Games 5 and 6. He actually drew six penalties in the series, tied for the most in the NHL in the first round.
He wasn't a rat. He was just a pain in the tuchus for the Bruins to deal with. And Boston really had no match.
When Tyler Bertuzzi was stomping on opponents' sticks, it looked like he might be the perfect foil for Tkachuk. But he wasn't quite in that league. And while Brad Marchand has enough experience in the grease department to fill the entire arena, he had to take on a more mature role in the absence of Patrice Bergeron. Garnet Hathaway had a moment or two but faded as the series went on. Jakub Lauko didn't get enough playing time to contribute in that department. Tkachuk, meanwhile, never relented.
"I mean it really is the biggest upset in NHL history to every single other person other than the guys in that room. I mean, trust me, we knew we probably weren't the favorites against a 65-win team, but what an unbelievable effort," Tkachuk said after Sunday's win. "I don't know, kind of one of those legacy games for a bunch of guys on our team and our franchise. We just did what nobody in the world thought we could do, and that is pretty exciting."
If that interview constitutes gloating, Tkachuk certainly earned the right.
The Bruins Aren't A One-Goalie Team
After the Bruins essentially split time between presumed Vezina winner Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman all season long, it was never going to work to lean on just one goalie in the playoffs. It just wasn't.
Ullmark made 48 starts during the season, by far the most of his career. (His previous high was 39, last year, when he also got pulled in the playoffs due to poor performance.) The 29-year-old Swede has just never been asked to grind through two grueling weeks of playoff hockey. He started six straight games once early in the season. But from Dec. 5 through the end of the season, Ullmark started 32 games, and Jeremy Swayman started 27. It was as close to a split as there can be for a team carrying the Vezina-winning goaltender.
So switching philosophies in the playoffs was never going to work -- not at full health, and certainly not with Ullmark dealing with some unspecified injury that popped up late in the regular season. Ullmark just is not the workhorse goalie who was positioned to make 25 starts en route to a Stanley Cup victory.
Admittedly, going with a platoon would have been an unconventional move for head coach Jim Montgomery. But the platoon made the Bruins the best regular-season team of all time. Trying something completely different in the playoffs was a dooming decision.
By the time Montgomery did go to Swayman, it was too late. Ullmark allowed four goals in an overtime loss in Game 5, committing the game-losing giveaway behind his own net, and then allowed six goals in Game 6 -- the most he's allowed all year. Swayman was good in Game 7, but he allowed a first-period goal that he'd probably like to have back. Some rust, though, is to be expected from a goalie who hadn't started a game in 17 days.
After the Game 7 loss, Montgomery passed the buck on the goaltending decisions, instead directing everyone's questions to longtime goaltending coach Bob Essensa.
"We just, you know, thought he was gonna give us the best chance tonight. You'd have to ask Goalie Bob a little more in detail about that, but we all thought that he was going to give us the best opportunity tonight," Montgomery said.
That belief certainly would have had a better chance of coming true if Swayman had gotten some real work in the series before the do-or-die Game 7.
Patrice Wasn't Patrice
Patrice Bergeron admitted after Game 7 that he's dealing with a herniated disc in his back. That explains why he missed Games 1-4, and it explains why he wasn't nearly himself in the three games when he was on the ice.
Bergeron scored a power-play goal with a redirect in Game 5 but registered no other points. And though as hockey observers we have evolved beyond the reliance on plus-minus, it's nevertheless shocking to see Bergeron at minus-6 in his even-strength time on ice.
He was still exceptional on the dot, winning more than 70 percent of his draws, but he wasn't able to be the player who likely earned his sixth Selke Trophy during the season.
It didn't help that when he returned to the lineup, he wasn't on a line with Brad Marchand to start Game 5. Montgomery listed that as his lone regret from the series, even though he reunited the longtime tandem in the middle of the first period.
Bergeron was on the ice for four Florida goals in Game 6, including the dagger seventh goal. And he was on the ice for the Panthers' game-tying and game-winning goals in Game 7. After two decades of being the perfect hockey player, this was an unfortunate way for his career to (likely) come to an end.
Bobrovsky Was A Stabilizer
Montgomery wasn't the only coach to make a poor decision in net in this series, as Paul Maurice tried to ride Alex Lyon to a series victory over the NHL's best team.
That journey went about as well as expected, with Lyon allowing nine goals on 92 shots in three games. He wasn't horrible, but he allowed some softies and quite clearly wasn't going to carry the Panthers.
So Maurice wisely made a switch to Sergei Bobrovsky. The veteran's playoff experience spoke for itself, but he hadn't played since late March. In that sense, it was a risky move, sure. And Bobrovsky allowing five goals in a Game 4 loss at home probably didn't inspire much confidence. But the 34-year-old was solid thereafter. He did allow five goals in a Game 6 win, but he was still the better goalie on the ice that night. And in Game 7, Bobrovsky had no issues stopping 33 shots -- including five in overtime -- to earn his 20th career playoff victory.
In a lot of ways, the series hinged on how Bobrovsky performed. And while he wasn't spectacular, he was steady. That's all Florida needed.
Connor Clifton Played Game 6
Not to pick on one player in a team sport, but the decision to play Connor Clifton over Matt Grzelcyk in Game 6 blew up in a way that few could have imagined.
Clifton's sloppy turnover while trying to exit the zone led directly to Florida's second goal:
He got caught behind the goal line and was late to cover the front of the net on the Panthers' goal to tie the game at 4-4:
And his careless giveaway when trying to exit the zone late in the third period led directly to the game-winning goal:
Again, it's a team sport. There's a goalie back there. Et cetera, et cetera. But without hyperbole, the Bruins probably would have won this series in six games if they had just dressed five defensemen in Game 6.
This
Ouch.
There's no fault there. Just two guys playing sports and one of them making a save. But that would have been and could have been perhaps the most exciting way a playoff series has ever ended.
Alas.
This, Too
Look, sometimes narratives take control of sports. Maybe that's at play to some degree here. Because this shot by David Pastrnak in overtime of Game 7 beat Bobrovsky clean. But in the same net where Charlie McAvoy's stick accidentally deflected Florida's game-tying goal past Jeremy Swayman, Bobrovsky's stick played the part of the hero in Game 7.
It's a crazy game, you know.
A Rare Nice Goal In OT
If you've watched enough playoff overtime in your life, then you know how it usually ends: Someone sends a puck across the ice, it hits a stick, then a skate, then flips over the shoulder of a goalie who doesn't even know the puck is heading his way. Ugly, garbage goals are the way of life in these instances.
That wasn't the case on Sunday night, when Carter Verhaege -- with the help of Matthew Tkachuk's screen -- scored on an absolute snipe job to end the series.
"I saw [the puck] go low to high, and then I just wanted to seal the low ice, but he thought he saw a corner and kind of dragged and shot it around some bodies," Swayman said after the loss. "But something I want back for sure."
Swayman was hard on himself, but that would have been a tough one to stop. And he wasn't the lone person responsible for that goal. Tkachuk outmuscled Grzelcyk to win a race to the puck behind the net. There, Tkachuk was more tenacious on the puck than both Brandon Carlo and Patrice Bergeron, and then nobody on the ice picked up Tkachuk, allowing him to plant his body directly in front of Swayman's face.
None of the five skaters on the ice -- Bergeron, Marchand, Bertuzzi, Carlo and Grzelyck -- are going to feel good about that one.
But from a Florida perspective, it was kind of a masterpiece, as far as OT playoff winners go.
Underestimating Florida
The Bruins would never admit it, and they may not even think it to be true, but it's impossible for a team as good as Boston to blow a 3-1 series lead to that Panthers team without some mental drifting along the way. It at least seemed like the Bruins were waiting for the Panthers to ultimately accept their fate and roll over, but it never came. Not in overtime of Game 5, not after falling behind 5-4 in Game 6, and not after falling behind 3-2 in Game 7.
Rather than step on the Panthers' throats, the Bruins waited for the Panthers to eliminate themselves. It was an underestimation, to say the least, as the Panthers proved to be a properly feisty group with a head coach who got the most out of them.
No Feel For "The Moment"
If one refrain rang out regularly throughout the Bruins' late-season run at regular-season history, it was the Bruins players and coaches saying they were trying to stay in the moment.
One would think that a Game 7 on home ice would be the ideal moment to savor, but the Bruins just weren't the better team on Sunday night. While only nine skaters remain from the 2019 Stanley Cup Final Game 7 Which Shall Not Be Named, it's the second dud in such a high-stakes moment for this franchise in the past four years.
This one wasn't a complete no-show, but the Bruins didn't score until 27 minutes into the game, when they trailed 2-0. They needed power plays to score two of their three goals. And after surging to take a 3-2 lead in the third period, they fell back on the strategy of playing not to lose instead of working to deliver a knockout shot.
Going back to the 2019 debacle, the Bruins franchise had a chance to accentuate one of its most consistent eras of hockey with a couple of Stanley Cups. It would have been quite the legacy. Instead, the late-teens/early '20s Bruins will go down, quite simply, as major disappointments. Some moments just proved to be a bit too large.
