With another ugly loss, Bruins continue to make it hard to take them seriously
"We can't afford to have games like this where we're not prepared. We need every point."
COMMENTARY
Nikita Zadorov didn’t mince words on Saturday.
Fresh off of a comeback win over the Colorado Avalanche, the Bruins’ defenseman pushed back against talk that a pedestrian Boston roster was primed to hit the links by mid-April.
I’m not planning to miss the playoffs. That’s why I’m here,” Zadorov said. “I’m here to play in the playoffs. I want to see Boston Garden buzzing.
“So I think that’s definitely extra motivation for us. I mean, you guys are doing a good job of writing us off, so I think that’s additional motivation as well for this group. Because we got a lot of characters. We got a lot of people who want to compete and play in the big stages. So I think that’s our mindset every day.”
It was far from a surprising retort from Zadorov and the Bruins, who are still clinging to a playoff spot as of Tuesday night.
If only they backed up that impassioned sentiment with their play on the ice against the worst team in the Eastern Conference.
Handed a prime opportunity to extend their win streak to three games — and build themselves some breathing room in a compacted wild-card race — the Bruins completely face-planted against the Sabres at KeyBank Arena, dropping a lopsided 7-2 result.
It’s the type of uncompetitive showing that unfortunately has been far too common this season.
Tuesday marked the 13th time in just 52 total games this season that the Bruins lost a game by three or more goals. Their minus-25 goal differential stands as the second-worst mark in the entire Eastern Conference.
For all of their gutsy performances at TD Garden as of late, Boston has been pushed around repeatedly on the road this season. Following Tuesday’s loss to a flawed Buffalo squad, the Bruins are just 9-14-3 away from Causeway Street in 2024-25.
“We want to be a good road team,” Bruins interim head coach Joe Sacco said Monday about Boston’s struggles away from TD Garden. “We get down a goal or two, you can’t let it get away from us, and I feel like that’s happening a little bit on the road. … We seem to tell ourselves that this game is still within reach, and we have to have that same attitude on the road.”
That mindset was hard to glean on Tuesday against a middling Sabres team, with Boston routinely letting any shifts in momentum dissipate in short order.
Just 55 seconds after Mason Lohrei opened the scoring for Boston with an impressive individual effort at 12:44, the Sabres answered right back — with Tage Thompson blasting a shot past Jeremy Swayman in the midst of some paper-thin transition defense.
Buffalo added to their lead in the second period with another pair of goals — with Boston’s defensive pairing of Zadorov and Andrew Peeke laboring all night (outscored, 3-0 in 19:37 of ice time together).
By the time Brad Marchand lit the lamp with under 10 minutes left in regulation, it was a 4-2 game: a daunting score for a team hard-pressed for offense like the Bruins, but a far-from-insurmountable deficit — especially against a defensively deficient team like Buffalo.
That hopeful sentiment lasted for exactly 30 seconds, with a brutal turnover and bad reaches from both Lohrei and Parker Wotherspoon allowing JJ Peterka to once again extend Buffalo’s lead to three tallies.
“We give ourselves a chance here in the third, make it 4-2, we got time left on the clock and the very next shift for you out there and give up a goal. It’s just stuff — you’re not gonna win like that,” Lohrei noted.
Even with Boston down another starting D-man in Brandon Carlo, it was a frustrating no-show performance all around for the Bruins — given both the opponent and the fact that several other teams hovering around Boston in the standings lost on Tuesday (Tampa Bay, Montreal, New York Rangers).
But it was also a result that shouldn’t necessarily come as much of a surprise — not in a season where seemingly every positive stretch submitted by this roster is promptly undercut by a morale-sapping blowout.
There was the comeback win over the St. Louis Blues on Nov. 12 — a hard-fought result for a reeling Bruins squad. It was followed by three straight losses to the Stars, Blues, and Blue Jackets (combined score of 15-5), leading to the firing of Jim Montgomery.
How about that gritty home win over the Capitals on Dec. 23? The one that was promptly led to a 1-6-2 stretch.
After those gutsy victories over the Senators and Avalanche last week, Tuesday’s letdown unfortunately felt all but inevitable for this Jekyll-and-Hyde crew.
The Bruins are saying all the right things — be it pushing back against talk that a playoff run is out of the picture this spring, or taking themselves to task for poor play out on the ice.
“We can’t afford to have games like this where we’re not prepared. We need every point,” Marchand noted on Tuesday.
Of course, it’s one thing to preach disciplined hockey and defy the critics.
But it’s another hurdle entirely for this team to consistently back up that talk on the ice.
And with Tuesday’s laugher of a game far from an outlier this winter, those calls for playoff hockey are starting to ring pretty hollow.
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