Boston Bruins
Bruins Hit New Low In No-Show Versus Senators
Things were finally starting to look up for the Boston Bruins.
A win over the weekend against one of the top teams in the league that snapped a six-game losing streak was supposed to be a launching point. A line of demarcation that Marco Sturm’s crew was over its early season struggles.
Apparently not, as the Bruins hit a new low point on Monday, falling 7-2 to the Ottawa Senators at Canadian Tire Centre.
“I thought giving the guys a day off yesterday, coming in today they’d be all ready to go, and we weren’t,” Sturm said. “To me, that’s the most disappointing thing. We just probably weren’t serious enough right from the start. That’s really unacceptable.”
All the fail safes the Bruins had built up, the few positives they could hang their hats on in previous losses, faulted versus the Senators.
Jeremy Swayman, who, for the most part, has kept the Bruins in games this year, stopped just 17 of the 24 shots he faced. Not that he had much help, though. Boston made five trips to the penalty box, putting even more pressure on an already overworked penalty killing unit that finally gave way and surrendered four goals.
“It’s every game so far,” said Sturm. “I think we’re the worst penalized team in the league. It finally caught up to us. You can blame the refs or whatever you want, but it’s on us. If we’re going to do that and be in the box all the time, it’s not going to work and not going to win us hockey games.”
The night started well for Boston.
Morgan Geekie continued to find the back of the net when he opened the scoring at 3:06 of the first period with his team-leading seventh goal of the season and fifth in his last four games. That hasn’t made much of a difference, though, for a team that’s dropped seven of its previous eight matchups in regulation.
“It can’t get much worse, really,” Geekie said.
Drake Batherson tied the score for Ottawa at 10:25 on the power play, tapping in a puck that was loose in the crease while Mikey Eyssimont watched from the penalty box.
Claude Giroux then gave the Senators the lead just over a minute into the second period, before Batherson added on at 14:44 with his second goal of the night.
Down 3-1, the Bruins were still within reach entering the third. But once a Nikita Zadorov tripping penalty led to a power play goal for Tim Stuzle 13 seconds in, the game quickly got out of hand.
“I feel like after the second, we could’ve come back in that game,” said Zadorov. “Then I go out there and take that penalty, and it kills all the momentum. That’s definitely on me. I feel like I do that 10 times a game and never tripped a guy. My stick got stuck between his legs. I got to watch the stick. It killed the momentum.”
Ottawa piled on with another goal from Stuzle on the man-advantage at 9:33, an even-strength tally by Nick Cousins at 12:22, and more on the power play courtesy of Fabian Zetterlund.
Viktor Arvidsson scored his second goal of the year for Boston with 10 seconds remaining, but that was about as useless as a desk fan on the surface of the sun. So too was Ottawa’s decision to challenge the play for offsides, which forced the Bruins to sit and look at the mess they made just a little while longer.
“I thought it was one of the worst ones,” Sturm said of the team’s overall performance. “It was really quiet [on the bench]. It was the same guys who were trying to get the guys going, but we can’t win games with one or two guys. We need the whole lineup, and we definitely didn’t have that today.”
The Bruins will host the New York Islanders on Tuesday at TD Garden.
