Boston Bruins: Did The Homestand End In The Nick Of Time?

The way the Boston Bruins polished off their “perfect” 5-for-5 homestand brought to mind the opening verse of the Modest Mouse hit, “Float On.”

I backed my car into a cop car the other day. Well, he just drove off. Sometimes life’s okay.

That was how inept and out of focus the Bruins appeared to be even as they got away with a come-from-behind 2-1 shootout victory over the Columbus Blue Jackets.

To let a game stay that close against the decidedly worst team in the NHL can hardly be considered smooth execution. That goes especially when you’re talking about a team that has recently sculpted the league’s best cumulative goal differential engaging a team with the worst differential.

By the halfway mark of regulation, only five Boston forwards had a single shot on goal. By night’s end, after 65 minutes of full-scale hockey action, the Bruins had tested Columbus stopper Curtis Sanford 27 times. The likes of Gregory Campbell, Andrew Ference, Nathan Horton, Daniel Paille, Benoit Pouliot and Dennis Seidenberg had no part of that.

Granted, Boston did attempt 55 shots, one of which hit the pipe in overtime. But the plebeian Blue Jackets managed to try 56 shots and forced Bruins goaltender Tuukka Rask to play 31 of them.

That’s not exactly going to look good on anybody’s resume.

Patrice Bergeron, who along with linemate Brad Marchand pelted Sanford only once on a single shift, was the Bruins’ only hope at the faceoff dot. He won 14 out of 23 draws whereas the team as a whole claimed only 24 out of 54.

At the end of the second period, Blue Jackets winger Derek Dorsett was already credited with seven bodychecks, thus matching Boston’s group total.

None of this is what one would have logically expected after all participants had spent their pregame media interactions pledging not to look past this matchup.

But perhaps these are all just some of the signs that the Bruins need a vacation. Or, better yet, a business trip.

They will get just that on Saturday when they venture down to Long Island for their first road engagement in exactly two weeks, dating back to a 7-0 triumph in Toronto.

Since then, the Bruins have settled into the TD Garden and done little more than nurse their outlook back to stability. With three straight six-goal nights followed by a pair of nail-biters, they have elevated their stature from the Eastern Conference cellar to one point shy of eighth place.

Naturally, home ice ought to be advantageous, but for every good thing there is in this world, there is always the possibility of having too much of it. And based on what has propped up over the course of Tuesday night’s 4-3 arm-wrestling triumph over the New Jersey Devils and Thursday’s escapade, the Bruins could benefit from a change of venue.

Tyler Seguin is still on pace to finish his sophomore surge in the 50-goal and 90-point range, but he has been quiet as a mime all week with his first instance of back-to-back scoreless outings.

Marchand hopped on the board to commence Tuesday’s third period, but only after a benching in the preceding period woke him up.

Horton and linemates David Krejci and Milan Lucic have tapered off after co-piloting the recent eruptions. Over the last two games, each constituent of that line has logged zero points and a minus-one rating. And Krejci went for more than 40 minutes Thursday night without winning a single faceoff.

In the way of special teams, the Bruins have drawn only two penalties on each of their last two adversaries, including a bench minor to Columbus in Thursday’s first period. As usual, the power play reaped no rewards, but perhaps more frightfully, the penalty-killing brigade has authorized two opposing power-play strikes over its last eight tours.

One can certainly credit the Devils, who trail Boston by a single point on the Eastern Conference leaderboard, for concocting a genuinely competitive contest. But the Bruins' previous opponent, the Buffalo Sabres, are just as formidable with a two-point lead and a virtual tie with Toronto for first place in the gridlocked Northeast Division.

And yet, three nights before New Jersey’s visit, the Bruins battered Buffalo, 6-2.

Conversely, New Jersey never fell behind by more than a goal. The Devils and Sabres, by the way, proceeded to have an entertaining matchup against one another on Wednesday, when Buffalo’s persistence came up short in the third period en route to a 5-3 home loss.

As for the Bruins and their awkward landing against Columbus, maybe they were not so much diverting their mind from the game as glancing at the doorway to their bus. It is not often that an NHL team stays in a single location for two weeks and five games at a time. Therefore, a change of pace is eventually in order.

The Bruins proved plenty during their lengthy stay at the Garden, but it’s time to pursue some fresher ways to hush any doubters.

After Saturday’s visit to the New York Islanders, which they will doubtlessly enter making the same pledge against complacency, they will have two bouts with Northeast Division rivals in historically unfavorable buildings.

At this point, maybe Montreal’s Bell Centre is exactly where Seguin and Co. need to be to fire their acetylene sticks back up.