Kalman: Slumping Bruins Have Created A Playoff Race They Could Lose
WILMINGTON (CBS) -- The Bruins beat the defending Stanley Cup champion Los Angeles Kings on Jan. 31 for their second straight win out of the All-Star break.
Boston had a nine-point lead on the Florida Panthers for one of the two Eastern Conference wild-card spots with the Panthers holding three games in hand on the Bruins. The standings have drastically changed since then.
When the Bruins woke up Wednesday, their lead was trimmed to four points over Florida, which still held two games in hand. The Bruins have lost three of their past four games. That was the onus for turning a day off Wednesday (cryptically listed every week on the Bruins' upcoming schedule as TBD) into a day of work at Ristuccia Arena.
Coach Claude Julien's voice was a little louder, the body contact between players was a little firmer and the post-contact grunts out of the players' guts were higher in volume as well. With a five-game road trip against four Western Conference playoff-worthy teams, the Bruins can't afford to keep playing at an "8" when Julien needs them at a "10."
"We have to play a certain way in order to be successful and having that fight within ourselves and in our game is what's going to give us success," Bruins forward Milan Lucic said after practice. "It's not about fighting, it's about battling hard and being hard on the puck and I think if you look, we were kind of, these last four games, I think we were a little soft on the puck and protecting it and stuff like that. So I think that's why guys were playing hard and being hard on the puck and trying to protect it and also on the defensive side trying to get it away from the other guys. Just wanted to up the intensity so that when it comes to Friday night [the road trip opener in Vancouver] that it just comes natural like it needs to be."
The Bruins need to "up the intensity" again because for some reason they turned it down after beating the Kings. They went 8-1-3 in January, started looking at a possible move up the standings and got comfortable. To a man, even the Bruins agree that their one victory in their current slump – against the New York Islanders on Feb. 7 – was more about the goaltender stealing the two points than them playing the way they could as a 19-man team.
A lot of the analysis of the past four games by the Bruins has echoed their diagnosis of their problems from December and early January. With the subtraction of the excuse that they had injuries (Zdeno Chara and David Krejci have been alive and well for a while now), the Bruins keep talking about work ethic, urgency and execution. All three of those things were lacking before the Bruins got hot prior to the All-Star break and have again disappeared since the win against the Kings.
The Bruins are a veteran team with many players that have played in two Stanley Cup Finals and even won the Stanley Cup. They could be forgiven for a lull in the middle of winter, with blizzards cancelling practices and making life in general a little miserable, had they not basically had a lull for the first three months of the season. The Bruins are now again in a race for a playoff spot.
Right now, their best asset is geography. Being in the East means the Bruins have only one legitimate challenger for their spot among the conference's top eight. If the Bruins were in the West, we'd be talking about a coin toss chance of them making the postseason. They'd be battling Dallas -- which beat them Tuesday -- along with Winnipeg, Minnesota, Calgary and even those Kings, if the Bruins were in the West. Essentially, the Bruins would be the Kings – a team with a prolific pedigree from the past several seasons that just can't seem to find any modicum of consistency.
The Bruins are again facing a test of character and leadership. When David Pastrnak rejoined them in mid-January and provided a youthful spark, they were able to build off that and resemble a championship contending team. That burst of adrenaline has worn off, both for Pastrnak and the team. Now they've got to find another source of motivation. A trade or two might go down in the next couple of weeks before the trade deadline to light a fire under the Bruins. Between now and then, the hard-charging Panthers might provide a wakeup call.
But it shouldn't take these outside factors to get a team to play its best. Lucic alluded to the fact that the Bruins weren't going to win every game for the rest of the season. No one expected them to. What is expected is 60-minute efforts that make the opposition earn victories against the Bruins, not games where they give away goals to the Montreal Canadiens and allow the Stars to score twice shorthanded without responding with a power-play goal.
Julien has tried everything to make this team jell and to keep it motivated. Practices vary in tempo and tone. Lines and defense pairs change regularly during and between games. Comments to the media have been blunt or vague, in defense of his players or critical. The efforts paid off during the January jubilation. Now it's on the players. The leadership group, led by Chara, Krejci, Patrice Bergeron and Chris Kelly, has to keep on pushing the rest of this team. Should the Bruins' performances continue to lag, general manager Peter Chiarelli is going to have to consider that the camaraderie of this team is a detriment rather than a benefit. These players may like one another a little too much. That might contribute to how easily they get comfortable with a few wins and a healthy lead in the standings.
While the Bruins are massaging each other and waxing poetic about the type of team they can be, the Panthers are catching up. It'll take more than just one solid month to get the Bruins into the postseason. That win against the Kings didn't make the Bruins Cup champs or even assure them of a playoff spot. The only thing ensured is that playing the way they have the past four games will lead to a brief or non-existent postseason run.
Matt Kalman covers the Bruins for CBSBoston.com and also contributes to NHL.com and several other media outlets. Follow him on Twitter @TheBruinsBlog.
