At the end of the first period of Thursday’s game against the Anaheim Ducks, it looked like the Boston Bruins might ease their way into a second-consecutive blowout win. In the process, they were likely to bury any lingering worries about a lackluster 4-1 loss in the season opener a week ago against the Washington Capitals.
On the heels of a 7-2 trouncing of the Carolina Hurricanes Saturday night, the Bruins outshot the Ducks, 19-11, in the first period Thursday. Boston drove to the net seemingly at will, leaving only Anaheim goaltender Joseph Hiller and a handful of misplayed opportunities around the net to keep the Bruins from blowing yet another game wide open.
Instead, the Bruins granted the Ducks one key opportunity, and similar to a week ago, the team came unraveled.
The Ducks didn’t waste the opportunity, as veteran Teemu Selanne knotted two goals in a 1:23 span when defenseman Matt Hunwick and winger Marco Sturm were each stuck in the sin bin just 52 seconds apart.
Four Anaheim goals and two periods of uninspired hockey later, the Bruins, coming off an Eastern Conference best 53-19-10 (116 points) season, were left humbled and in need of long look in the mirror.
‘I think it’s something that needs to be addressed, no doubt about that,’ Bruins coach Claude Julien said about the team’s inconsistent play through three games. ‘Both games [against Washington and Anaheim] have been a result of not being able to handle a little bit of adversity well.’
The inability of the Bruins to respond to Selanne’s second-period goals was reminiscent to the lack of an answer to Brooks Laich’s first-period goal in last Thursday’s loss to the Capitals.
‘Until Washington scored, we played well,’ Julien said. ‘[Tonight,] we’re up one-nothing and they score a couple goals on a couple power plays, and instead of getting back and working on getting the next goal, we lost track of what we had to do out there, and they just kind of took the game over at that point.’
Much of the inconsistency, according to Julien, comes directly from a lack of effort.
‘I thought we could have brought our game up another notch, and that’s what we needed to do in the second period,’ Julien said. ‘But it’s hard to bring that when, again, the effort just wasn’t good enough tonight from most of our guys.’
One of the backbones of the Bruins during their 53-win campaign in 2008-09 was their physicality and hustle along the boards. Through three games, that same intensity has yet to come through on a consistent basis.
‘They out-skated us and out-worked us,’ captain Zdeno Chara said. ‘For sure we need to find out our niche and consistency and our 60-minute game. We can’t just be focused on our first 20 [minutes].’
‘You’ve got to play for each other,’ Julien said. ‘You can’t play for yourself. That means short shifts, that means good effort and that means doing what we did the other night against Carolina. You stick up for each other, you play for each other and you get the results.’
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