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Bruins spark some hope, then face plant in a recurring trend
The Bruins' comeback win in St. Louis on Tuesday felt like a distant memory after Thursday's 7-2 drubbing.
Optimism was abundant for a seemingly rudderless Bruins team after Tuesday night.
In a season where the Bruins have sleepwalked through multiple matchups, a .500 roster finally offered up some fight in St. Louis — rallying back from a two-goal deficit in the third period en route to a hard-earned, regulation win.
Seemingly little has gone right for the Bruins so far in 2024-25, be it a dearth of scoring, a recent slew of injuries, and severe regression across several foundations of the roster on the blue line, power play, and in net.
But for the first time in a long time, the Bruins seemingly had momentum on their side entering Thursday’s road matchup against the Dallas Stars.
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“I think the biggest thing for us is understanding that just because we had a good game last game or good areas of the game, we have to continue to reset and have the same mentality that we did in the third to start the game,” Brad Marchand said Thursday morning. “Just understanding how important each detail is within our structure and not getting away from that when you get down by a goal or you make a bad play and you start to deviate from the plan.”
It didn’t take long for any semblance of that momentum to completely dissipate on Thursday night.
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After securing their most encouraging win of the season, the Bruins again fell flat on their face in Dallas en route to a 7-2 defeat.
The same frustrating script played out for Jim Montgomery’s roster on the road, with porous D-zone coverage, soft plays on the puck, and severe lapses in execution again putting Boston on the wrong side of a lopsided loss.
“We lost every battle. Soft on the puck, soft everywhere,” Nikita Zadorov said postgame. Not finishing checks. We just got embarrassed today.”
The Bruins failed to cash in on another two power-play bids against Dallas, with Boston’s league-worst man advantage now just 8-for-70 on the season.
Thankfully, a 26th-ranked Bruins PK unit was not tested by Dallas until garbage time in the third period. But it did little to slow down a Stars roster that shredded through what little resistance was put in front of them in Boston’s D zone.
Jeremy Swayman — fresh off of inking an eight-year, $66 million contract in October — was knocked for seven goals off of 38 total shots.
He’s now sporting just an .888 save percentage on the season.
In front of Swayman, the Bruins’ defensive structure regularly invited Dallas into grade-A scoring chances.
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Dallas’ fourth goal off the stick Oskar Bäck? A failed breakout pass from Nikita Zadorov, a poor puck battle from Pavel Zacha in the neutral zone, and a poor read from Swayman off a chip shot.
The fifth goal? A whole lot of puck watching from Boston’s forwards in the final seconds of the second, giving Evgenii Dadonov ample time to snap a puck over Swayman at 19:49 in the frame.
And the sixth tally? A byproduct of Trent Frederic being outmuscled for a loose puck near the blue line by Jason Robertson, with Roope Hintz knocking his centering feed through Swayman’s five-hole.
It was far too easy for Dallas, and that’s putting it lightly.
As ugly as Tuesday’s result was, it was also far from an outlier in a season where the Bruins have turned any spark of optimism into a sputtering mess.
Remember Boston’s 5-3 road win over the Avalanche on Oct. 16? The Bruins followed that up with three straight losses, including a shutout defeat to a Nashville Predators team entering Thursday with just five regulation wins over 16 games.
What about Boston’s gutsy overtime win over the Maple Leafs on Oct. 26? Boston was then promptly shut out by a rebuilding Flyers team, 2-0, before getting trounced by the Hurricanes in Raleigh, 8-2.
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There was more hope of a turnaround after Boston reeled off back-to-back shutouts against the Flyers and Kraken at the start of November. And the Bruins followed that with a 4-0 shutout loss to the Maple Leafs.
And here the Bruins are on Nov. 14, miring back at .500 (8-8-2) and bereft of whatever good tidings were drawn out of Tuesday’s comeback.
Taking one step forward and two steps back has become a hallmark of the 2024-25 Bruins, a team operating with legitimate Cup aspirations just a month ago.
Perhaps the next overtime conquest or third-period rally will kindle optimism that a mid-season surge is incoming.
All we’ve seen so far points to the other conclusion.
That perhaps the 2024-25 Bruins just aren’t all that great. Or that change is desperately needed.
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