Bruins Devoured By Ducks For Seventh Straight Loss

Under no circumstances should a duck ever be able to take down a grizzly bear.

Tell that to the Boston Bruins, then, who made the Anaheim Ducks look like apex predators on Wednesday night at Honda Center as they fell 6-2 for their seventh straight loss, marking their longest losing streak of the season.

“It’s a frustrating time right now, more than anything,” Bruins interim coach Joe Sacco told reporters in Anaheim. “I think that when you get down a few goals, like we do, you start to try to play catch-up hockey, and you open yourself up for more mistakes. That’s the problem, and, right now, I don’t think that’s conducive to our game.”

The Ducks took control from the very start by landing 14 of the game’s first 18 shots on goal, but the Bruins seemed to catch a break when they drew the night’s first power play opportunity. Instead, it broke their backs.

A shorthanded goal put the Ducks on the board at 17:33 of the first period as Leo Carlsson ripped a shot past Joonas Korpisalo off an odd-man rush.

After Nikita Nestorenko increased Anaheim’s lead in the middle frame, David Pastrnak responded for Boston on the man-advantage for his team-leading 35th goal of the season. But that was as close as the Bruins ever got.

Jackson LaCombe and Cutter Gauthier tacked on a pair of goals for the Ducks to close the second period before Carlsson and Mason McTavish added two more to open the third, making it a 6-1 game.

Morgan Geekie netted his 26th goal of the season with 7:14 to play, as he and Pastrnak continue to be the only two Bruins generating any sort of consistent offense. Through the game’s first 40 minutes, Boston had a combined nine shots on net.

“It’s not enough,” said Sacco. “That’s not the way that you’re going to score in this league, by overpassing, trying to make cute plays, and playing too high risk of a game. We need to be more direct in our game, number one. We need to start shooting more. I’ve talked about this a number of times. We did in the third, but it was too little, too late at that point.”

Korpisalo finished the night with 31 saves on 37 shots. While that’s an ugly stat line to bear for any goalie,  most others would’ve done much worse than Korpisalo as he weathered the storm in net all night behind a depleted Bruins defense.

“There are some goals I want to take back, but you just try to battle through it,” Korpisalo said. “I tried to do that today.”

With the loss, the Boston’s record drops to 30-34-9 as the team remains winless on its current road trip.

One can only imagine that it cannot get any worse for the Bruins from here. Then again, that’s what we were all saying earlier this season.

“I’m not taking anything away from Anaheim,” said Pastrnak. “They were better at every aspect of the game today. That’s too many times that happened this year. It’s really hard to find the words. You try to fix it, but it’s Game 7. We shouldn’t even be standing and talking about games like this. This is the kind of game that should happen in the first, maximum, 15 games to the start of the season, but here we are.”

The Bruins will conclude their road trip on Saturday night in Detroit.

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