Kalman: Bruins' Loss To Avs Makes Iginla Absence More Glaring
BOSTON (CBS) – The Bruins easily could've left TD Garden with a 2-1 win and the two points on Monday.
But an evenly matched game against the Colorado Avalanche went the way of the visitors by that score when a defensive breakdown by the wild-and-wooly pair of Dennis Seidenberg and Matt Bartkowski resulted in Avalanche forward Daniel Briere banging in a rebound with just 0.4 left on the clock.
The Bruins dropped to 1-3-0 and now have lost three in a row in regulation for the first time since March 2012. However, all is not lost just yet.
The positives for the Bruins went beyond center David Krejci's return to the lineup after he missed the first three games with an undisclosed injury. With Krejci back on a line with left wing Milan Lucic and joined by rookie Seth Griffith, making his NHL debut, the rest of the lineup was able to fall pretty much into place and the Bruins mustered 28 shots toward the Colorado goal.
Only one shot, a backhand on the power play by Loui Eriksson in the second period, found the back of the net. Part of that was Colorado goaltender Reto Berra, and part of it was just old-fashioned lack of finish from the Bruins. Nonetheless, Patrice Bergeron centered Brad Marchand and Reilly Smith, and Carl Soderberg centered Chris Kelly and Eriksson. Although the fourth line had Daniel Paille on the left wing, Ryan Spooner at center and Jordan Caron on right wing made that line the only one with a seriously different look than recent seasons.
Coach Claude Julien lauded his team by saying: "I think it was a better effort. I think there was better concentration. I think at the end of the day, some of those crucial mistakes came back to bite us. That's the story of this afternoon's game and it's unfortunate. Like I said, it's a bitter pill to swallow. But I saw some improvement in our team overall and I saw some positive things happen. Now we've just got to turn these things into wins."
Julien went on to explain that he thinks his players are forcing things under pressure to get the offense going. Anyone that saw the number of cross-ice passes that were made and the number of cross-ice passes that were intercepted throughout the game would agree with Julien's assessment.
But then Julien hit on one more difference in the game that cost the Bruins.
"We've got Griffith on the right because [Jarome] Iginla's not here, he's on the other side," Julien said.
Iginla wasn't much of a factor against the Bruins, and he's still looking for his first goal of the season. But October has always been his worst month. It was last year when he shared the Bruins goal lead with 30 by the time the season ended. And it's always given him trouble.
By now we all know the salary-cap reasons why Iginla wasn't retained after last season. We also know that the Bruins thought Eriksson could replace him on the top line and they abandoned that experiment before the season even started. Finally able to get Lucic and Krejci together in the regular season, the Bruins decided to finish the line with Griffith, a second-year pro who was picked in the fifth round in 2012. Griffith's a crafty offensive player who's produced in the American Hockey League. However, it's a steep fall from Nathan Horton to Iginla to a 5-foot-9, 192-pound player that's only two years removed from playing for the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League.
The hole Iginla left was the Bruins' greatest problem entering training camp and it's still the biggest deficiency in the Bruins four games into the regular season. There are no in-house candidates to make up for that loss. After Eriksson and Griffith, it appears the Bruins' next options are Simon Gagne, who's coming off a year out of the League; Smith, whose move would weaken Bergeron's line; Kelly, whose move would weaken Soderberg's line; or another Griffith-type player in terms of stature and experience.
General manager Peter Chiarelli said that his trade of defenseman Johnny Boychuk was the first step on a list of moves he has to make. Everyone knows a top-six, or at least top-nine, right winger tops Chiarelli's shopping list. With every loss and every game that see the Bruins score fewer than two goal, the urgency to acquire that type of player grows. Meanwhile, the Bruins' slow start and the whole remaining in the lineup have kept the incumbent veteran players on edge.
"Yeah definitely, there's a lot of pressure right now, there's still a few question marks I think and a lot of uncertainty with what's going to happen," Marchand said. "But a few new faces, so you want to try and step up and I think right now collectively we all have to come together and be a little better."
This team won't come together until all the pieces are in place and right now the Bruins just aren't whole.
Matt Kalman covers the Bruins for CBSBoston.com and also contributes to NHL.com and several other media outlets. Follow him on Twitter @TheBruinsBlog.
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