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The Bruins' Disastrous Defense, Summed Up In 4 Videos

BOSTON (CBS) -- This is our nightmare.

There are plenty of expletives I could borrow to describe the Bruins' season-opening dumpster-fire of a loss, 6-2 to the Winnipeg Jets on their home ice. But this is a family website, so I'll have to keep it clean...something that the Bruins defense did not do, puking all over their skates on several occasions.

There's no way the B's defensive corps will look this disastrous when Zdeno Chara returns, hopefully on Saturday against Montreal. Can't bury the team after just one game. But even with Big Z back on the ice, there's little depth behind him - just as everyone feared entering the season - and it showed up big-time in the game Thursday night.

I never thought I'd see a goalie give up five goals with literally none of them being his fault. But that's basically what happened to Tuukka Rask last night. The only goal he had a reasonable chance of saving was Mark Scheifele's bomb from the top of the right circle over his shoulder, but in every other instance the defense hung him out to dry.

Matt Irwin should be the first D-man sent to Providence once Chara comes back. He showed last night that he might not be an NHL-caliber defenseman, when he was tasked with handling the puck behind the net and failed miserably. Veteran Andrew Ladd out-worked and out-finessed Irwin for the puck right behind the Bruins net, former Bruin Blake Wheeler (who has rounded into a solid top-six winger) buried his wide-open chance, and that was the beginning of the calamitous nosedive that continued throughout the second period.

And then there was the Drew Stafford goal to put the Jets up 3-1. Zach Trotman lost Stafford trying to cover the front of the net, while Irwin just lost everyone and everything. You have to wonder what Irwin is looking at and thinking about, considering he's looking right at the play yet apparently couldn't even begin to figure out how to cover the Jets down low.

It looked like the Jets were doing circle drills around a bunch of mannequins.

As bad as the backend looked for the Bruins, the forwards didn't do much to cover up their problems. David Krejci, who otherwise had a decent game, let the plodding Chris Thorburn blow past him to get in alone on Rask and stuff it through his pads for his first of maybe 5 or 6 goals he'll score all season.

Claude Julien agreed that the forwards need to be held accountable too, saying "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 backend."

But who turned the puck over to get Winnipeg's rush started? Our friend Irwin, yet again.

And finally, this game was a circus already so we might as well have the puck pinball off a couple skates for a goal. All this game missed was a defenseman (likely Irwin) literally throwing the puck into his own net. Rask actually almost saved this puck, but his skate couldn't redirect it enough to miss the net.

OK, so the defense shouldn't be quite as catastrophic as they looked without Chara on Thursday. Get the captain back in the lineup and they could at least stabilize the top pairing. But Chara can't play all 60 minutes. Even with switching Irwin out for the captain, there's no reason to believe the rest of the defense will get significantly better with their positioning or decision-making. Lapses like these could become commonplace.

There's going to be a lot of open ice for Bruins opponents this year - and it could mean a long season on Causeway St.

Matt Dolloff is a writer for CBSBostonSports.com and owner of several Bruins Barf Bags. His opinions do not necessarily reflect that of CBS or 98.5 The Sports Hub. Read more from Matt here. Follow him on Twitter @mattdolloff and email him at mdolloff@985thesportshub.com.

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