Bruins Notes: Boston Knows ‘Embarrassing’ Effort Is ‘Unacceptable’
The Boston Bruins had an energetic boost in the first two games after the trade deadline, winning both contests against division rivals: the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers.
Whatever energy the Black and Gold had in those first two games seems to have disappeared, and the Bruins were overpowered in their last two games, including a 6-2 blowout loss to the Lightning on Saturday night at TD Garden.
Despite the Lightning getting on the board first, the Bruins played pretty well in the first period and went to the room tied 1-1 after Elias Lindholm scored his 12th goal of the season on a beautiful feed from defenseman Andrew Peeke. It was the middle frame that the wheels came off.
The Bolts outshot Boston 20-0 in the second leading the Black and Gold faithful to boo the home team off the ice after 40 minutes of play.
“I’m not really sure what happened in the second here,” Lindholm told reporters, per team-provided video. “The compete level was nowhere to be found. Unacceptable overall, there and it’s frustrating for sure.
“You always want to play hard at home. The fans deserve it. They pay a lot of money to come here and watch us play. Obviously, they have every right to boo when the effort is like that. We talked about it too. Always work hard, even though we’re down, we try to push back. But tonight, it was unacceptable. We deserve to get booed.”
“You can’t play only one good period a game and win. That’s something we have to learn from,” Pavel Zacha said after the loss, per team-provided video. “It’s really frustrating. Especially not even having a shot on goal in the whole period. We can’t play like that. It’s embarrassing. We just have to be way better.
“I think we deserved (the fans booing). I mean, when you play like that and have no shots on goal. We had been outplayed the whole period. It doesn’t feel good, but we all knew when we came back (to the room) that we deserved it. We had to play better. Especially at home for our fans. It just wasn’t good enough.”
Here are more notes from Saturday’s Bruins-Lightning game:
— The Bruins fell to 30-30-8 overall on the season and 19-12-5 at home. With the loss, Boston is four points out of a playoff spot with just 14 games remaining in the regular season.
— After giving up four goals on 15 shots in the first period in Boston’s loss to the Ottawa Senators on Thursday night, Jeremy Swayman battled between the pipes against the Lightning and made 33 saves on 37 shots in his 23rd loss of the season.
Despite the loss, Swayman is still not losing faith in his team.
“I know that we have something in here that is special,” Swayman said, per team-provided video. “I’m going to keep pushing on them and try to lead and try to get these guys going as much as I can and do my job. I know that it’ll follow, and when we get momentum, it’s pretty hard to play against us, so we just have to stick to our identity. Nobody respects us, and that’s something that we need to get behind. I think that we can do it.”
— The Bruins will try and end their two-game losing skid when they host the Buffalo Sabres on Monday night. Puck drop from TD Garden is scheduled for 7 p.m. ET, and you can watch the game on NESN after an hour of pregame coverage.