Boston Bruins' 2-0 Loss to Montreal Does Not Qualify as a Moral Victory

The Boston Bruins will have one more chance to ensure residual vinegar does not taint their Thanksgiving respite this week. That will come Monday night in the form of a visit from the Metropolitan Division-leading Pittsburgh Penguins.

To make good on that chance, they will need to address their costly shortcomings in Saturday’s 2-0 loss to the Atlantic Division-leading Montreal Canadiens. They will need their top players and veterans to behave and perform as such a little more than they did in a third straight loss to the Habs.

It is naturally tempting to point to the key absences in Boston’s lineup as Saturday’s prime culprit. It is easy to underscore the four players in action at the TD Garden who have also dressed for Providence in 2014-15. Ditto for defenseman Matt Bartkowski and winger Matt Fraser, who are not regulars on the game roster under normal circumstances.

Those players, however, were not the reasons why the Bruins blinked twice in their own end. They were not why Boston’s strike force failed to solve Canadiens goaltender Carey Price.

Instead, it was an assortment of established NHL skaters who precipitated the two setbacks that spoiled one of Tuukka Rask’s better bouts with his nemesis.

Defenseman Torey Krug incurred Boston’s first penalty upon interfering with PA Parenteau. Montreal capitalized on the subsequent power play for the icebreaker and eventual clincher.

Krug, who later lost his cool and scrapped with an equally unlikely brawler in Alex Galchenyuk, was on the ice for the visitors’ insurance strike. That goal, though, can be traced back to a blunder by Boston’s most seasoned line available for Saturday’s game.

With David Krejci and Chris Kelly among those out of commission, Milan Lucic spent the better part of Saturday with Carl Soderberg and Loui Eriksson. That meant sandwiching a 29-year-old center with two veterans of seven-plus NHL seasons, each with top-six experience.

To their credit, those three forwards combined for nine of Boston’s 33 registered stabs at Price. But when they had a chance to produce a second-period equalizer on an odd-man rush, Lucic failed to catch a feed from Soderberg.

The Swedish pivot would be charged with a giveaway seven seconds before Montreal’s Tomas Plekanec scored at the other end. That marked the Bruins’ most egregious case of spilling a pot of potential momentum.

They had other chances to do the same, only to whiff on each of them. They could have seized and punctuated the momentum earlier in the game, even before the Canadiens broke the ice.

Montreal was in a mild penalty-killing slump going into Saturday’s action, having allowed three opposing power-play goals on eight segments in its previous three outings. With Jiri Sekac’s boarding infraction 75 seconds into the game, the Bruins had a radiant invitation to keep that trend going and start harboring a lead with negligible delay.

In addition to the immediate man advantage, there was enough promise on Boston’s side within the first six minutes of the action. Besides the penalty call, two of the game’s first five stoppages were due to Montreal icings. Price himself summoned another one.

But, per Caryn Switaj of the team's website, Bruins head coach Claude Julien would later opine, "If there’s something we’re going to critique here it’s probably the fact that we didn’t put enough pucks on net and get some net-front presence." In other words, his pupils made Price’s night a tad too easy, even when they were getting the better of the Montreal netminder's skating mates.

With the hulking likes of Lucic and Soderberg linking up on the same line, one ought to have expected more than that. Yet Lucic is now pointless in his last five games and has gone seven straight without a goal.

Contrast those fortunes with those of Eriksson, who still has yet to endure more than two unproductive games since Oct. 13. Or those of Soderberg, who got back on the board Friday night in Columbus, where he set up Daniel Paille’s go-ahead goal.

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One would think that, by joining a pair of hotter hands for a rivalry game that speaks for itself, Lucic would not need much more to help him leave a legitimate imprint on Saturday. Yet he and the rest of Boston’s healthy, active veterans could not percolate anything that stuck where it mattered the most.

For the players who saw more action than usual, that might be comparatively excusable later in the game. But for the 60-minute toil in general, the most likely temptation is to point to the team’s quick turnaround and travel after the aforementioned clash in Columbus.

That too, however, lacks merit. Although the Bruins cultivated two points from the struggling Blue Jackets, they did so in a 4-3 shootout decision—otherwise known as a 3-3 regulation tie.

In turn, Boston could have boosted itself with a craving for a more complete victory. As if the itch for head-to-head redress with the Habs, the victors of two meetings in Montreal already this season, would not be enough.

As Saturday’s upshot confirmed, all of that was not enough, assuming it was even there. As a consequence, the urge for a sounder, crisper game is now more visible and logical than it was coming out of Columbus.

The good news for the Bruins is that they get a full day to recuperate, followed by a virtual do-over against another Eastern Conference bigwig.

There ought to be matching moods between Monday’s contestants. The Penguins are coming off a 4-1 loss in Uniondale, which gave the New York Islanders a home-and-home weekend sweep.

Under those circumstances, willpower and a healthy intensity stand a substantial chance of spelling the difference. For the Bruins, who might or might not regain a few key players by next Friday against the Winnipeg Jets, the difference is primarily between a sweet or sour interim.

With Kelly, Krejci and Brad Marchand, in particular, Boston might not be able to ice the same roster against Pittsburgh that it did in last Tuesday’s 2-0 statement win over St. Louis. But it should have no reason to neglect to bring the same resolve, which it brought in modicums for Saturday’s 2-0 falter.

Unless otherwise indicated, all statistics for this report were found via NHL.com.