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Bruins bemoan lack of physical pushback in lopsided loss to Flames
"We definitely didn't push back enough the way we needed to to elevate to their level.”
A glance over the final scoresheet from Tuesday’s matchup between the Bruins and Flames at TD Garden seemingly told the tale of a spirited scrap.
In total, 41 penalty minutes were doled out on Causeway Street.
The Flames finished the night with 27 total hits. The Bruins? 29 hits.
But Tuesday’s final stat lines did little to tell the whole story of Boston’s first game back from the All-Star break.
And while those hit totals might have painted the picture of a physical, back-and-forth battle, the most important stat on the sheet — goals — stood in stark contrast to such a narrative.
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Because not only were the Bruins handed an ugly 4-1 loss by a pedestrian Flames team, but Boston’s top skaters had few positives to draw from the team’s ability to match Calgary’s pugnacious approach.
“They were extremely physical after the whistle,” Charlie McAvoy noted. “Yeah, I don’t think we tried to match that enough.”
“I thought Calgary was physical,” Jim Montgomery added. “I didn’t think we were physical.”
While the Bruins labored at times against Calgary’s heavy forechecking game, Boston’s leadership honed in on the lack of a proper response on a bruising sequence in the first period.
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After trying to fish a puck away from Flames goalie Jacob Markstrom during a post-whistle scrum, Brad Marchand was trucked over by Calgary forward Martin Pospisil. Pospisil was tossed from the game for his cross-check, but made it down the tunnel relatively unscathed beyond just a few shoves and grapples.
“Yeah, they play hard,” Marchand noted. “They were getting into a lot after the whistles. They’re running around. We definitely didn’t push back enough the way we needed to to elevate to their level.”
A lack of physicality was far from the only reason why Boston struggled on Tuesday in its own barn.
The Bruins’ penalty kill relinquished two goals, with Boston coughing up a power-play tally in 14 of its last 21 games.
A momentum-shifting 5-on-3 sequence for the Bruins was negated by a self-inflicted miscue in the third period, with Boston wasting the final 1:45 of a power-play bid due to a too-many-men penalty.
And Jeremy Swayman (four goals against on 29 shots) likely wants a few of those tallies back, especially Noah Hanifin’s power-play dagger at 9:44 in the third period.
“I just didn’t think we were good,” Montgomery noted. “Our effort was poor. Obviously, as a coaching staff, you look inwardly and we like to look at our preparation.
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“You always think as a coach, your preparation was good — but obviously, it wasn’t good enough. A lot of mental mistakes, a lot of physical mistakes, and that’s a lack of real good preparation, individually and collectively.”
The Bruins will not have to wait very long to try and right the ship. Boston will welcome the top team in the NHL (points-wise) in the Vancouver Canucks to TD Garden on Thursday night.
“We had two really good days of practice. So I don’t really know what kind of happened tonight,” Marchand noted. “But we get to learn from it and we got a really good team coming in here next game that we need to be prepared for.”
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