Boston Bruins' Loss to Minnesota Wild Stings More Than It Logically Should

Games like this are going to happen once in a while. A goaltender like Minnesota’s Niklas Backstrom seals his borders to an otherworldly extent and pitches the hardest of hard-earned shutouts, leaving the starved strike force to shake their heads and lightly drum their sticks out of goodwill.

But for the Boston Bruins, games of this nature are occurring far too frequently for them to personally lend any due credit to the opposition. Following Sunday’s third-period horn, they moseyed with melancholy off the ice at the Xcel Energy Center, having failed to add to their 2011-12 point total for the sixth time in nine tries this calendar month.

Out of their first nine outings in February, the Bruins have also failed to pad their formerly league-leading goal total on four occasions.

This is nothing like Dec. 8, when Boston was blanked by former Minnesota Wild goaltender Jose Theodore in a statistically identical 2-0 loss to Florida. For Claude Julien’s pupils, a concession to a crease-based nemesis was appropriate and harmless in that much more prosperous period.

But today, acknowledging the stinginess of the current Wild backstop might as well be akin to a tired excuse. The Bruins are still without a pair of back-to-back victories since Jan. 12 and, in the interim, have brooked two sets of back-to-back regulation losses.

Coming off a 4-2 Friday night defeat in Winnipeg, their incentive to readily reserve their fortunes should have translated to tangible gains on Sunday’s score sheet. It did, but only to the extent of bending and not breaking the luckless trend.

As it happened, the two forward lines who have stayed intact through all of the recent injury-induced turbulence accounted for the bulk of a tone-setting opening frame. Patrice Bergeron won each of his first nine draws, including all five in the first period, while linemates Tyler Seguin and Brad Marchand landed two shots on net on four attempts.

Meanwhile, the nominal fourth line of Gregory Campbell, Daniel Paille and Shawn Thornton pitched in eight of the team’s first 14 registered stabs at Backstrom. Their abundance of stimulating chances began on their second shift in the sixth when Thornton assertively cleared the puck from deep within his own end and watched his two colleagues, plus Adam McQuaid, issue a fleeting flurry.

But Boston blew its most radiant invitation to break the ice in the closing phases of a scoreless opening frame. They claimed the game’s first power play and, ultimately, their only man-up segment of the game with 2:17 to spare, meaning a conversion would simultaneously reward their period-long patience and inject a hefty splash of momentum with an intermission imminent.

But perhaps not so ironically, being the renowned five-on-five force that they are, one of the Bruins’ leanest segments of the day was that five-on-four “advantage.”

Even with the Wild shorthanded and resorting to their average-rate penalty killing brigade to bolster Backstrom, the Bruins could only muster three attempted shots on the man-advantage. All three were off the blades of a defenseman, and the only one to reach Backstrom was courtesy of Andrew Ference, who ventured deep into the near faceoff circle to snap a relatively close bid from 26 feet.

Upon saving their most momentous whiffed opportunity for last, the Bruins took the scoreless draw to the dressing room and back to a fresh sheet, where they were soon clipped by karma. The 0-0 knot lived to see the halfway mark of regulation before Chad Rau roofed home a Dany Heatley feed.

A mere four minutes and 15 seconds of playing time ticked before Minnesota converted its lone power play of the day, ultimately cementing the 2-0 upshot.

That makes four Boston losses this month against teams currently out of the NHL playoff picture and a total of 13 on the year. Since Groundhog Day, three of the Bruins’ four shutout losses have been three of their four shortcomings against plebeian adversaries: Carolina, Buffalo and Minnesota.

Even without Nathan Horton or Rich Peverley, a team of Boston’s build simply need not have this much goose egg on its face at once. The time is overripe for the Bruins to start emulating the better part of their recent opposition and willing their way back to a winning streak.

Wednesday night’s visit to St. Louis will be one of the more opportune times to reverse the traditional roles. With the regal defense and goaltending of Brian Elliott and Jaraslav Halak on deck, the defending Stanley Cup champions should have a prime target to pursue at Scottrade Center.