Not only did they build a 4-0 lead through two periods of Tuesday night’s game, they unwittingly halted a Panthers power play when the house bulbs at TD Garden mysteriously powered down for a long two-count.
And yet . . . the Black and Gold were in a dark mood afterward, having dropped a 5-4 decision in a shootout.
How did it all go wrong? How did they surrender four goals in the final period and 2 points to an Atlantic Division rival? How did this first-place team lose its fourth game in a row?
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“Things got compounded,” coach Bruce Cassidy said.
Let’s break them apart, since the Bruins will surely be doing so over the next two days. On a day the first flurries of the season arrived, this one snowballed out of control.
Boston (11-3-4), which takes its four-game skid into a weekend road-home set with Toronto (Friday) and Washington (Saturday), was cruising, having chased Florida starter Sergei Bobrovsky, the $10 million netminder. David Pastrnak, Joakim Nordstrom, and Anders Bjork beat the ex-Blue Jacket with powerful shots. Zdeno Chara picked up loose change in front to make it 4-0, celebrating his goal with a theatrical uppercut.
Bobrovsky was done after 40, taking a knockout punch after stopping 19 of 23 shots. His teammates put just 12 pucks on Tuukka Rask in that time. This game was Boston’s.
But 50 seconds into the third, Aaron Ekblad hammered a one-timer from the circle past Rask (four goals on 29 shots). Nordstrom, who lost his stick, was unable to stop Keith Yandle’s cross-ice pass. Rask said he was too deep in his net.
“It’s a poor-angle shot,” Cassidy said. “But a good shot. So you’ve got to get your game back together.”
Plenty of time to do it, even though Frank Vatrano, the ex-Bruins winger, smacked a one-timer past Rask on the power play at 5:26 of the third, with Chris Wagner in the box for slashing. Cassidy said he wasn’t sure why Wagner earned the penalty call. But Vatrano made it 4-2, after Jonathan Huberdeau stickhandled between three Bruins penalty-killers.
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“Now all of a sudden they’ve got life,” Cassidy said. “They’re coming.”
Some four minutes later, Panthers winger Mike Hoffman — who was loading up his howitzer from the high slot when the lights went down early in the second period — trickled a soft backhander underneath Rask, who left room under his pad. The netminder, as he usually does, owned his gaffe.
“I should have been sharper. A couple soft goals,” he said. “I take most of the blame on that third period.”
Sam Montembeault, who came in cold and stopped all 15 shots he saw, allowed the Bruins nothing. Boston was outshot, 12-9, in the third, and couldn’t finish the job when Panthers plugger Noel Acciari tripped his old pal Sean Kuraly with 6:28 left.
“There’s two ways you’re going to calm things down,” Cassidy said. “You’re going to score a goal because they’re coming at you and gambling all over the ice, or you’re going to defend better. And we did neither.”
Montembeault made two saves on the penalty kill.
“I give their goalie a lot of credit for coming in cold,” Cassidy said. “We missed some open nets on the power play. He made some great saves. We hit a crossbar. So now doubt creeps into your mind — is this really happening?”
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It was.
On the tying goal, Aleksander Barkov beat Charlie McAvoy on a rush wide. Pastrnak and Brad Marchand were circling away from the loose puck. Cassidy noted that a Panther — it was Huberdeau — was holding Patrice Bergeron’s stick, preventing him from clearing a puck that was in front of him.
Yandle, son of Milton, tucked home the loose puck. From 4-0 to 4-4, the Bruins were on their way to more pain.
“Structurally we were bad on that last goal,” Cassidy said. “That’s the disappointing part to me. That’s when we’re usually rock-solid.”
They certainly were that in the first 40. They mustered seven shots in a tight-checking first, playing stout defense before breaking through in the second. Pastrnak’s no-look shot, on a two-on-one with Marchand, gave him his league-best 16th goal of the seasons. Breaking in against Ekblad, he was looking toward Marchand until he was nearly even with the hashes, then keeping his head and torso turned toward his running mate, and selling the pass until he followed through with his shot.
Nordstrom, the fourth-liner, made it 2-0 by rolling down the right wall and ripping one far side, and Bjork bullied a power-play wrister past Bobrovsky. Those pretty second-period snipes, and Chara’s celebration, were not a talk topic in the dressing room afterward.
“It’s on us,” Chara said. “We gave them too much space and time. We lost a point, and it’s on us . . . We have to realize that teams are ready to play us. We have to elevate our game.”
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In OT, Rask made a one-on-one glove save on Hoffman. But Hoffman got the shootout winner, after Vincent Trocheck and Charlie Coyle scored. Hoffman tore the twine, cutting across the slot and sniping underneath Rask’s glove. McAvoy hit the post at the other end. Drive home safely.
“The Bruins get a loser point,” analyst Andy Brickley said on NESN’s telecast, as the Panthers toasted to their theft. “And that’s exactly what it feels like.”
Follow Matt Porter on Twitter at @mattyports.
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How the Bruins let a win slip away - The Boston Globe
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