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Bruins were no-shows in a got-to-have-it game against Sabres
There are no silver linings to be found in the Bruins' 6-1 loss to the Sabres in a Sunday matinee at TD Garden.
This is how a hockey season ends up on the brink.
Trailing two games to one in a first-round Stanley Cup playoff series and playing at home, you pull a mortifying no-show from the opening drop of the puck.
You turn the puck over like it’s the season of giving, leave your game-but-helpless goalkeeper on a lonely island over and over and over again, and spot your opponent a 4-0 lead before 15 minutes have passed in the first period.
Do all of those foolish things, play a gotta-have-this-one hockey game with little poise and even less pride, and congratulations, you’re the Boston Bruins on Sunday afternoon.
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There are no silver linings to be found in the Bruins’ 6-1 loss to the Sabres in a Sunday matinee at TD Garden. The Game 4 debacle — the Bruins’ fifth straight playoff loss at the Garden — does not officially end the season. But the performance was so listless and sloppy that it felt like obvious foreshadowing of the season’s final scenes when Game 5 is played Tuesday night in Buffalo.
The Bruins played like they had visions of future tee times dancing in their heads. The absentee performance of his team left first-year coach Marco Sturm flummoxed.
“I really don’t know. I can’t answer that,’’ he said when asked by NESN’s Andy Brickley postgame why his team submitted such an uninspired effort. “I mean there’s no reason for it. If you’re in the playoffs [and] you come back as a Boston Bruin and you’re playing at home, then you should have a lot of juice. For some reason we didn’t.”
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Game 4 started a few minutes past 2 p.m. The Bruins showed up at . . . actually, they never did. It was utterly a juice-free performance, to borrow Sturm’s term.
The Sabres scored their first goal just 4:17 into the game, taking advantage of the Bruins’ stupefying carelessness with the puck, which would become a recurring theme.
Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy passed the puck from behind the net to Fraser Minten along the boards. Minten, for no apparent reason, casually redirected it to the middle while encountering token-at-best pressure.
Alex Tuch — the former Boston College star who scored the winning goal in the third period of Game 3 — pounced on the puck and fed Peyton Krebs for a one-timer, and a quick 1-0 Sabres lead. The goal was the Sabres’ first in a first period in this series, and the first time they have scored first in any of the four games. That Buffalo would score first seemed inevitable: At the point of Krebs’s goal, the Sabres were already outshooting Boston, 7-1.
The Sabres doubled their advantage less than three minutes later. At 5:08, the Bruins were called for too many men on the ice when McAvoy, after leveling the Sabres’ Josh Doan, looked like he was coming off, but stuck around while Hampus Lindholm jumped on too early.
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The Bruins had killed all 14 previous Sabres power plays though the first three games, and technically they did this time, too. But two seconds after the penalty expired, Doan scored on a redirect, his first goal of the series, after Lindholm’s clearing attempt went directly to Bowen Byram. He moved the puck to Ryan McLeod, who found Doan in front.
Two bad turnovers, and two Sabres goals . . . whoops, make it three bad turnovers and three Sabres goals. This time, the Sabres took advantage of Bruins lethargy. As defenseman Jordan Harris tried to carry the puck out of danger in the defensive zone, no one appeared to make much of an effort up ice to give him a passing target. Harris ended up holding the puck too long, and a pair of Sabres pressured him. Zach Benson poked the puck loose, collected it, drove the net, and beat Jeremy Swayman five-hole at 9:15 for a 3-0 lead.
Goal No. 4 came after — say it in unison now — another Bruins turnover, this one courtesy of Morgan Geekie. The puck ended up in the possession of Owen Power, who fed Byram for a one-timer, beating Swayman, who couldn’t get across quick enough after getting tangled up on the other side of the net.
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The outcome was unofficially decided before the first period was complete, not that it got much better afterward. The Bruins finally scored on Sean Kuraly’s shorthanded goal with 40 seconds left in the game, but that cut the final margin to 6-1. Beck Malenstyn and Tuck scored earlier in the third, 84 seconds apart, to put the Sabres up by a half dozen.
If the Bruins’ season does end Tuesday night, they will be left with much to lament heading into the offseason.
They led in each of the first three games of this series, and won just one. But nothing should linger like the Game 4 loss, because the effort, mentally and physically, was closer to what you’d expect from a preseason matchup than a crucial playoff game.
Where was the discipline? Where was the physicality? Where was the poise? Where was the pride?
Those questions, and that critique, particularly applies to their best players. McAvoy, who played like one of the best emen defensemen in the world during the Olympics in February, had no points and was minus-4. David Pastrnak, was minus-2, had no points, and got off just three shots. His only goal in the series came in Game 1.
In the Small Consolations Dept., at least the Bruins aren’t officially done yet.
Tuesday night’s Game 5 starts at 7:30 p.m.
The Bruins, on the brink, might want to show on time. Actually, showing up at all would count as progress.
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