For the third straight season, the Bruins aren’t collapsing, they’re quitting
COMMENTARY
They’re doing it again.
As we barrel toward the conclusion of the NHL season, the Boston Bruins are, once again, choking down the stretch, seemingly destined to gag away a chance at the postseason for the third-straight year.
As it turns out, Bruce Cassidy isn’t the savior we thought he might be.
The Bruins have lost four games in a row, at a time when every point is critical for their playoff hopes. The latest loss came Thursday night with a pathetic, 6-3 effort against the Tampa Bay Lightning, a team that had been going through its own funk before playing in a building against a team that had beaten it in every meeting to that point.
But if there seemed a difference this season from the last two collapses under Claude Julien, it might have been the argument that the Bruins were at least competitive in their failure. While disastrous in their outcomes, the 4-2 loss at Toronto on Monday and the 3-2 trip up against the Ottawa Senators Tuesday night were at least competitive affairs, games in which the team came up short but not for the effort of its core.
Thursday night against the Lightning instead looked like the endings to 2016 and 2015.
The Bruins are quitting on the season.
Again.
“At the end of the day I think it is a focus and it’s urgency and it’s understanding time and score,” Cassidy said following Thursday night’s loss. “We did not have a good comprehension of that tonight, and of late. We’ve let games get away.”
Get used to it.
With 82 points, the Bruins currently sit uncomfortably in position for the Eastern Conference’s second wild card, two points in front of the New York Islanders, who host Boston Saturday for what has developed into an enormous showdown for their playoff lives.
So was Monday against the Maple Leafs.
So was Tuesday against the Senators.
So was Thursday against the Lightning.
You can see where this is going.
Eight games remain, including a final-week stretch that includes games against the two teams vying for the President’s Trophy, Chicago and Washington, as well as Ottawa, a team the Bruins have never held a lead against this season, never mind beaten, and the Lightning, now only three points in back of the Bruins for the final playoff spot with a game in hand.
If you think the Bruins are going to suddenly transform into something they’re not in order to save themselves, perhaps you should familiarize yourself with how things ended the last two seasons. Because it’s headed there again, despite the protests from the Boston dressing room.
“I think it’s not good enough from top to bottom,” said forward David Backes. “I’ll be the first guy to point fingers at my chest and say I need to be better. Tonight was certainly not our best when it’s that time of year [and] you need your best every night to win, no matter who you’re playing against or what the circumstances may be. This one certainly hurts . . .
“But now’s not the time to not be giving ourselves a chance to win and we need to be doing that every night. Tonight, we didn’t and we’ve got eight games left and they all need to be really good-to-great ones so that we can find our way into these playoffs.”
Forgive Backes for the optimism. It’s his first go-around in the Bruins’ annual springtime gag.
Cassidy actually reserved some of his criticism Thursday night for goalie Tuukka Rask, who is generally wrapped in a protective bubble against backlash. But after the Bruins surrendered a trio of one-goal leads against the Lightning, Rask was fit to be in the crosshairs. In the third period, Rask was awful, surrendering a pair of goals that he should be depended on to stop.
“He needed to be better,” Cassidy said. “We need to be better in front of him. He needed to be better on some of those goals. What are we? March 23? Really, our focus needs to be there. You hope it’s more fatigue than focus at this time of the year. But I can only speculate.”
Rask has a .910 save percentage this season. There are 31 goalies who have been more dependable.
“You look at overall how we’ve played team defense the last couple of weeks, I think it’s starting to slip a little bit,” Rask said. “The goals that are being scored, a lot of them are right in front of the net or around the slot area. At this point of the season we need to tighten up and prevent those kind of goals.”
That’s true of the first two goals scored on Task Thursday night. The excuse shouldn’t be duplicated for the the goalie’s subpar performance in the third period.
Then again, this is a guy who bowed out of last year’s must-win season-finale with the flu. Perhaps, indeed, Cassidy sees the guy a little better than the media and fans who insist on putting him on a pedestal.
Julien isn’t around to blame any longer, and while this latest stretch isn’t a defense for those who felt he should have stayed in Black and Gold, it does help place the target on the backs of the underachieving players. There’s a lackadaisical virus that has infected this team for the past three years. It’s still here, despite Julien’s absence.
Things have changed, but nothing has.
The Boston Bruins are once again in the midst of what is becoming their defining, season-ending collapse.
On Thursday, they proved their fight was over.
Time to quit on the season.
Again.
