Kalman: Once Cup-Driven Bruins Now Sound Content With Moral Victories
BOSTON (CBS) -- I paid my dues as usual Saturday afternoon.
I sat through all 60 minutes, 44 seconds of a Bruins game.
These days, you have to expect Bruins games are going to last longer than 60 minutes. With the way this team scores at basically a two-goals-per-game clip and bungles plays with the puck when ahead by razor-thin margins, overtime and shootouts have become the norm. You also have to expect a game low in entertainment value.
The pay off after watching the ugly brand of hockey these Bruins now play is typically a postgame press conference with coach Claude Julien. Win or lose these days, Julien's puts on his "bitter beer face" and dances around all questions. There are few answers he's willing to reveal publicly lest he lose secrecy as one of his weapons of mass destruction.
But my colleagues and I still expend oxygen to throw queries at the coach. More often than not these days the questions are along the lines of "What's wrong with this team?" or "What's wrong with that player or that line?" Those are the questions mediocrity gives birth to.
Once in a while, though, you lose your breath and can't summon the energy to ask a question. Sometimes something so flabbergasts you that you just mail it in, leave the questions to others and hope the whole dog and pony show wraps up quick.
That's what happened to me after the Bruins lost to the Ottawa Senators at TD Garden on Saturday. The Bruins have earned a point in eight of their past 10 games. For that impressive achievement they've been rewarded with 10th place in the Eastern Conference. Against a Senators team that's supposed to be inferior both in talent and work ethic, the Bruins played like they didn't want to crack eggs in their uniforms. They had a few scoring chances, killed off two 5-on-3s and had their entire healthy lineup for the third time this season after Adam McQuaid was activated.
But with the season almost at its midway point, these little victories shouldn't quench the Bruins' thirst. You would've expected the Bruins, who have now left a point on the table against a conference foe two straight games, to be burning. You would have especially expected the coach to be on his last nerve. Instead of a tirade from Julien, we got a "we'll get them next time" speech.
"I thought overall our effort tonight was good. It was good enough that we could've won a game," said Julien, who was clearly ready to distribute ice cream sundaes on the flight to Carolina. "We're not winning those and it's frustrating for everybody, including you guys, so I know we can nitpick every little detail of our game, but you know we've played the last two games well enough to win. They're not perfect, but there good enough to win. And I think that's where I'm going to be careful with how I talk about this thing with you guys and with the team, because you know we're working hard we still have some areas we got to get better at we still forced some plays that ends up giving us some issues, but you know overall I thought the effort was good."
That wasn't the whole quote. But I can feel you rolling your eyes as you read it and I don't want you to get stuck that way. Julien went on about how the bounces didn't go the Bruins' way. After all, the game-tying goal was heading wide before it deflected off Mike Hoffman's skate.
Never mind that had the Bruins played with real grit and determination they might've had the type of lead that doesn't get wiped out by one bad bounce. Never mind that after the Senators tied the game, Ottawa forward Milan Michalek gave the Bruins a gift power play with less than three minutes left and the Bruins still had to settle for going to overtime.
Never mind that in the Bruins' last game against Toronto they rallied from 3-1 down to force overtime. Both goals went in off Maple Leafs players, including one that went off the goaltender and a defenseman before finding the back of the net. Those bounces wen the Bruins' way and they still failed to find a way to get those two points.
Never mind that the Bruins' effort was so "good" that after two periods Julien felt the need to switch his top two left wingers' lines, putting Milan Lucic with Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand with David Krejci. That move paid off when Marchand scored the go-ahead goal midway through the third period. But with so much on the line, two of the Bruins' best left wingers brought nothing to the game for 40 minutes. Julien wouldn't reveal much about his thinking on the matter other than to suggest both Lucic and Marchand forced his hand with their indifference. Marchand hardly had an answer for not answering the bell when it rang at 1 p.m.
"I don't know, you know, just every game is different, every night is different, and you just try to find a way to battle through it and be the best you can," Marchand said.
But when a coach's opening statement harkens back to your youth sports days and moral victories, you just can't probe deeper. Julien doesn't want to nitpick and there's no way to make him do it. However, it's obvious he's at a loss of what to say or do with this team that's on the verge of making his run of seven straight playoff berths a memory.
Once the Bruins dressing room opened, there were varying opinions on the effort coming from the players. Some wanted better. Some sounded satisfied with the work ethic even if the result was a failure. Only goaltender Tuukka Rask showed any real emotion, as he usually does. He at least didn't want to make the bad bounces the First Star.
"It's not just the bad bounces, but you know from a goaltending standpoint it's frustrating because it's a one-goal game and we're playing a good game and killing those penalties and then that [expletive] happens," Rask said. "So it's not just the bad bounces but it would be nice to get those our way more often than the other way more often than the other. But there's no excuses. A loss is a loss and we got the point. We still feel like the game's going the right way. I don't think we got as many scoring chances as we would like to. But still when the defensive game's there and the game is tight like that, it's a good sign."
Rask countered his criticisms with that "good sign" stuff, but at least he dropped a few four-letter words and sounded fed up. Others, though, seem content to be one-point wonders.
It wasn't too long ago when the Bruins' focus was on the Stanley Cup from Day One and every failure brought out their best the next time out. They'd never overreact or let themselves get too far low, but they'd use mistakes and disrespect to their advantage.
Now they respond with a collective shrug and basically take an Alfred E. Neuman "What me worry?" approach to everything. That might be the only question worth asking.
Matt Kalman covers the Bruins for CBSBoston.com and also contributes to NHL.com and several other media outlets. Follow him on Twitter @TheBruinsBlog.
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