Once viewed as a strength, the Bruins’ defense has completely unraveled
"It’s embarrassing, frankly, letting these games slip away from us."
The 2024-25 Bruins entered a new season with a couple of question marks this fall.
While many expected Boston to once again stamp its spot in the playoff picture, there were plenty of concerns already in place about the Bruins’ scoring capabilities — especially following the offseason exits of wingers like Jake DeBrusk, James van Riemsdyk, and Danton Heinen.
Apprehension over regression from several key cogs across Boston’s roster proved to be a fear quickly realized, while the absence of a training-camp ramp up for Jeremy Swayman put the Bruins’ No. 1 netminder behind the eight-ball.
But in the midst of a reworked (and seemingly improved) roster, one area of the depth chart that didn’t raise any alarms was a D corps stocked with skill and snarl.
With a bruiser like Nikita Zadorov added to the mix, Boston’s projected six-man defensive grouping to open this year bolstered an average profile of 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds.
Add in the playmaking presence provided by stalwarts like Charlie McAvoy and Hampus Lindholm — coupled with the promise of a rookie like Mason Lohrei — and Boston’s blueliners seemingly had the mix of talent and heft needed to give any opponent issues.
“Look at our D corps. A lot of horses there,” Zadorov said in September. “So it’s exciting. … If you look at the Panthers, you look at any team in the Atlantic Division, they’re big, they’re hard to play against. So I think we’re just gonna match the conference.”
So much for that.
It hasn’t taken very long for the 2024-25 season to go sideways for Boston.
Sure enough, a dearth of scoring and skill up front has routinely hindered the Bruins, who sit outside of the playoff picture in the Eastern Conference. A slow start for Swayman didn’t help things, to say the least.
But in what has been a back-breaking development, Boston’s trademark stingy defense has turned into a sieve — sapping the Bruins of arguably their steadiest foundation in an unstable campaign.
Wednesday’s 5-1 loss to the Devils on Wednesday night was par for the course for Boston.
- For the seventh time in their last eight games, the Bruins were outshot, 35-23. They have now been outshot, 302-210, over that eight-game stretch.
- Boston’s penalty kill relinquished three goals on the night, dropping the Bruins’ shorthanded unit to 25th in the league with a 75.0 percent success rate.
- The Devils generated a whopping 13 high-danger scoring chances at 5-on-5 play against the Bruins, with Boston only creating four high-danger looks of their own down the other end of the ice.
While the Bruins have left a lot to be desired on the defensive end this season, things have completely bottomed out over the last few weeks for Joe Sacco’s team.
As noted by WEEI’s Scott McLaughlin, Wednesday marked the eighth time this season that Boston has surrendered 13 or more high-danger scoring chances at 5-on-5 action. Six of those defensive disaster classes have come over the last 13 games for Boston.
Yes, there’s not skating around the fact that the Bruins are seriously shorthanded on defense with both McAvoy and Lindholm sidelined due to injury.
But even the absence of two talented blueliners shouldn’t result in a team-wide epidemic where pucks are fumbled, easy clears are fired into opposing sweaters, and lapses in D-zone coverages routinely put Swayman and Joonas Koripisalo under siege.
“Handling the pressure coming out of our D zone — to me, that’s the biggest area we have to improve on,” Sacco said on NESN’s postgame coverage. “Second period, it’s a 1-0 game, and we’re unable to execute two plays coming out of our D zone.
“We turn the puck over, it’s 1-1. Now we’re back on our heels, couple of other shifts where they hemmed us in there for a few minutes. The inability just to get the puck out in certain situations, we have to be better with that.”
Wednesday’s lopsided loss to New Jersey comes less than a week after Boston’s defense was shredded by Ottawa in what should have been a must-win game — with the Sens erasing a two-goal deficit in the final four minutes of regulation en route to a shootout victory.
The Bruins will have an opportunity to rectify that embarrassing finish in Ottawa on Thursday when they welcome the Senators to TD Garden.
Granted, “opportunity” isn’t exactly a word that has resonated with the 2024-25 Bruins — especially not with Boston’s seemingly stout defense looking more and more like a paper tiger.
“We’re trying to find an answer in here and what we’re doing is not good enough,” Morgan Geekie said on NESN. “We know it. It’s embarrassing, frankly, letting these games slip away from us. There’s not many of these left. We know the position we’re in and what it’s going to take to climb out of it. Just try to get back on the horse tomorrow.”
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