Kalman: Bruins Defied The Odds To Earn A Point Against Caps
BOSTON (CBS) -- By 10 p.m. Saturday, Bruins defenseman Kevan Miler was in the hospital, defenseman Torey Krug had gone 40 games without a goal, Boston's power play was 0-for-5, and the Bruins lost 2-1 in overtime to the Washington Capitals at TD Garden.
Despite all the negative happenings, there were more reasons for positivity than doom and gloom after the final horn sounded.
First off, the Bruins, who were a train wreck at home up until one week ago, finished their homestand 2-1-1, including 1-0-1 against the Western Conference-leading Chicago Blackhawks (a 4-2 win on Thursday) and the overtime loss to NHL-leading Washington. Two elite teams with slightly different styles entered the Garden and didn't have an easy time.
That's a major sign of progress from a team that has lost home games to Toronto, Columbus and Buffalo this season.
"It's a positive obviously," Bruins captain Zdeno Chara said. "We would like to have the extra point but we're playing better, we're playing solid hockey right now. And we've got to continue to do that. We have obviously tough games and a tough schedule. It's not getting any easier coming up. We've got to really focus taking one game at a time and try to get as many points as possible before the end of the regular season."
Second, the extra point was right there and the Bruins didn't miss out on it as much as the Capitals, who became the first team in the League to reach 100 points, stole it. There was an offside call that canceled out Krug's goal at 3:19, which could have given the Bruins a 2-0 lead. Instead Washington coach Barry Trotz challenged the play and won by the most miniscule amount of timing between David Pastrnak and Loui Eriksson crossing the blue line. The Bruins have been on the wrong side of several challenges this season, and those losses have left coach Claude Julien too exasperated to even criticize the call.
"You know, you guys keep asking coaches. We're not all, I guess, 100 percent on board with some of that stuff, but you've got to live with it," Julien said. "You live with it, because we always compare it to other calls that we've had, whether it's with other games and stuff like that. I guess we don't always see consistency, but who are we."
The Bruins didn't hang their heads after the call. They kept battling and then they lost Miller to an apparent shoulder injury after he was rammed into the boards from behind by Washington superstar Alex Ovechkin. Because Miller is an honest American and didn't grab his face or his head, Ovechkin was given a five-minute major but not a game misconduct that would have resulted had there been injury to the face or head.
Later the Bruins had nearly two minutes of 5-on-3 with Ovechkin off for his major. Patrice Bergeron, who scored the lone Boston goal, hit the post. Washington goaltender Philipp Grubauer, filling in for Bruins killer Braden Holtby, made several spectacular saves with various parts of his body.
"Disappointing," Krug said about the Bruins' power play. "I said it a couple nights ago, part of the power play is scoring goals and making sure that we complete those chances. We hit a couple posts tonight. Five-on-3 for almost two minutes, it's really disappointing I think. We score there, it changes the game. We take a lot of pride on the power play and it could've won us a game tonight, but it didn't."
The Bruins didn't take advantage of the lengthy power play and then Miller's absence came back to haunt them on Washington's tying goal. With Chara paired with Dennis Seidenberg, the Capitals took advantage of some sloppy play down low and Karl Alzner beat Seidenberg to the slot for the redirect that evened the score 1-1. With Miller at Chara's side, the Bruins had slowed the high-powered Capitals offense nearly to a halt.
Miller went to the hospital to be examined and there's no telling how long he will be out. For the rest of regulation, the Bruins kept Washington scoreless. That was a credit to goaltender Tuukka Rask, who finished the game with 28 saves, and the likes of Adam McQuaid and John-Michael Liles (shifting over to the right side) picking up the slack for Miller. The Bruins often talk about being a resilient bunch, but rarely have they shown that this season. Against Washington, two nights after their impressive triumph against Chicago, the Bruins showed gumption and earned a point no one gave them a chance to earn a few days ago.
Now they're in a position to earn some wins during their two-game road trip to Florida and comeback as a first-place team in the Atlantic Division.
"I think we're playing better," Chara said. "But at the same time there's always room to improve. Like I've been saying, it's not getting any easier and we have some tough games ahead of us, a tough schedule and we've just got to continue to play hard and with solid efforts for 60 minutes."
Matt Kalman covers the Bruins for CBSBoston.com and also contributes to NHL.com and several other media outlets. Follow him on Twitter @TheBruinsBlog.
