Boston Bruins
Undisciplined Bruins Drop Close Contest To Sharks
The numbers will say the Boston Bruins should’ve defeated the San Jose Sharks Sunday night at SAP Center, but there are only two stats that actually matter.
The first is 3-1, which was, of course, the final score in favor of the Sharks. The other is seven, which is the amount of penalties the Bruins committed.
Spending a total of 10:26 killing off penalties, the Bruins were never able to maintain any sort of momentum. Rather than actually playing, Boston’s most impactful players were resigned to watching most of the game from the bench.
“If you’ve ever played the game before, you’ve got to be in a rhythm,” Bruins coach Marco Sturm told reporters in San Jose. ” If you’re not, it’s tough to get going again. You could see it in the third [period], guys are rolling and got a bit of momentum. But we just couldn’t do it before because of penalties. That’s the difference.”
It didn’t help that Sharks goalie Yaroslav Askarov fended off practically each of the 34 shots the Bruins fired at him, aside from one from Morgan Geekie in the third period, that is.
“We just didn’t have enough traffic in front of him,” said Elias Lindholm, who logged 15:41 of time on ice in his return to the Boston lineup. “He saw a lot of pucks. Any goalie is good then. We made him look good.”
Jeremy Swayman played just as well, if not better, making 28 saves on 30 shots for Boston. After all, it was the Bruins who spent the majority of the night shorthanded, and it was he who bailed them out time and time again.
Even with all the penalties the Bruins took, they were still quite successful on the kill, surviving five of the six shorthanded situations they faced, including a prolonged stint in the middle frame where they were down two men.
The only one they didn’t make it through came when Macklin Celebrini snapped a wrist shot inside the far post and past a screened Swayman to make it 2-0 Sharks at 11:45 of the second period.
Geekie pulled Boston back within one at 10:02 of the third period.
Knowing they desperately needed a goal, the Bruins deployed Geekie, along with David Pastrnak, and Pavel Zacha in search of some sort of offensive spark. The three wreaked havoc in the offensive zone, working with Hampus Lindholm and Henri Jokiharju to move the puck back and forth and side to side as they skated circles around the Sharks.
Eventually, after Pastrnak skated the puck behind Askorov’s cage for what felt to be too many times to count, he dished a backhand pass over to Geekie at the back door for him to score his 17th goal of the season and fifth thus far through the Bruins’ road trip.
It was the kind of shift the Bruins had been searching for ever since San Jose started the scoring way back at 15:53 of the first period with a goal from Shakir Muhkamadulin.
“I think we did a good job of possessing pucks in the O-zone, and tried not to give pucks away too quickly,” Geekie said. “We had a couple shifts where we spun around in their end in the third. It was good to capitalize, but obviously not enough.”
Boston pulled Swayman in the final minutes, but all that did was leave an exposed net for San Jose’s Collin Graf to hit with 1:07 remaining.
After three games in California, the Bruins will depart having gained just two points and with an overall record of 13-11-0.
“We tried everything we possibly could,” said Sturm. “We just found ourselves down a couple goals, against a hot goalie, too. We probably didn’t do a good enough job of being in front of him. It’s just unfortunate to leave points here. Those are the points, I think at the end of the day, that we could need. That’s a couple now, if you look at the trip, Anaheim and today, that’s the frustrating part.”
The Bruins will close their road trip on Wednesday night when they visit the New York Islanders.
