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Bruins' Sweeney Era Starts Same As Chiarelli's – With Little Respect For The D Zone

BOSTON (CBS) - The Don Sweeney era opened almost the same way the Peter Chiarelli era started.

The Zdeno Chara-less Bruins were ripped by the Winnipeg Jets 6-2 Thursday at TD Garden. Nine years earlier the Bruins fell in their first game with Chiarelli as GM 8-3 on the road to the Florida Panthers.

In fact one of the few differences between the two games was that Chara, who's still day-to-day with an upper-body injury, played nearly 30 minutes in the debacle in Sunrise. Without Chara, the Bruins' current defense corps closely resembled the one that played that pitiful game against the Panthers, which foreshadowed the doom and gloom of Dave Lewis' one season behind the Boston bench.

If there's a silver lining for Sweeney, five years later he and Chiarelli were raising the Stanley Cup in Vancouver. Well, there's also the matter of Chara being on the cusp of a return. But it's going to take more than getting the 6-foot-9 star defenseman back in the lineup if the Bruins performance Thursday was any indication of just how much developing the Bruins are going to have to do on the job in 2015-16.

Back at the dawn of the Lewis/Chiarelli administration the Bruins were bragging about playing aggressive hockey and being tough to play against. However, they didn't respect the defensive end of the rink all year, starting with the opening loss. The Bruins for several years under coach Claude Julien have been a model defensive franchise that has often turned strong defense into solid offense – enough to win the Stanley Cup once and also reach the finals a second time. It took a while though to get the right players and achieve the right amount of buy-in to win the ultimate prize under Julien.

This season the Bruins have emphasized getting more aggressive and putting opponents on their heels, while trying to maintain that defensive structure and accountability.

The Bruins on Thursday, however, looked more like the Lewis Bruins than the Julien ones for most of the second period.

"We want to attack together and have layers," said Bruins goaltender Tuukka Rask, who was left to flail after shots after Bruins miscues and finished with 26 saves. "And today, especially in the second period, we tended to cheat a little bit offensively. And when the gap becomes too big, we make one bad play, very, very short after that it's going to be a shot on goal against us."

Tuukka Rask
Tuukka Rask #40 of the Boston Bruins reacts after allowing a goal against the Winnipeg Jets during the second period at TD Garden (Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

Even before Chara's injury, and before Dennis Seidenberg's back surgery, the Bruins knew they would be integrating fresh faces on defense. Adam McQuaid, Kevan Miller and Torey Krug returned, but Joe Morrow and Zach Trotman had had just a cup of coffee in the NHL and Matt Irwin had been playing with San Jose. When you mix in the new breakout game plan and the desire to get on the attack quicker, and you have a recipe for some hiccups.

The current defensemen might not conjure up nightmares of Jason York, Paul Mara and Nathan Dempsey quite yet; but they might if they don't improve from their Thursday performance.

Nonetheless, the physical limitations of the Chara-less defense corps can be made up for with brains and trust in the system, the things the 2006-07 team lacked. It also takes five skaters to make crisp plays, especially when you're asking McQuaid and Krug to be your veteran leaders.

"So I don't think it's necessarily D's, I know we're young and we expect to have some challenges there but I think we have to look at our games as a whole tonight and see where those mistakes were made. It was more than just the back end," Julien said.

There were definitely issues beyond the defense corps. Although the line of Ryan Spooner centering Brett Connolly and Jimmy Hayes created its share of scoring chances, it seemed to give up two for every chance in its favor. Center David Krejci's line had a couple breakdowns too.

In the Bruins' favor is the presence of plenty of healthy players who've learned over the years the difference between having an attacking mentality and playing footloose and not taking care of the defensive zone. Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, Chris Kelly, Krejci, McQuaid and Krug should be able to instill confidence in the newcomers to get them to think defense first. Julien will also have to pull back the reins a bit on this tweaked style, especially if Chara misses more games.

Nothing will ever erase the nightmare of the Chiarelli/Lewis season, but the resurgent Julien era made sure that Chiarelli's reign was one for the record books. Now we can look back at the Lewis season and laugh.

Julien has to clean up his own mess now. And that might mean scrapping delusions of two-way grandeur and simplifying the game plan until Sweeney develops and acquires the type of personnel Chiarelli eventually assembled for Julien.

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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