Bruins Can't Close, Are Now Close To Being Dregs

BOSTON (CBS) -- The Bruins slid out of the Eastern Conference playoff picture after the Florida Panthers defeated the Detroit Red Wings on Friday.

That alone should've been enough to motivate the Bruins to play their best game of the season Saturday.

But the standings weren't the only factor the Bruins had on their side. They had star defenseman Zdeno Chara back in the lineup for the second straight game. Logically, Chara should've been ready to play better than he did in his return game Thursday against the Chicago Blackhawks.

The Bruins were also facing an Ottawa Senators team in turmoil. The Senators had won once in their past seven games, changed their head coach from Paul MacLean to Dave Cameron this week, and scratched popular veteran defenseman Chris Phillips without an injury causing that move.

To top it all off, the Bruins are now heading off on another road trip that is dwarfed in difficulty only by their prior road trip to California and Arizona. The Bruins are heading off to Nashville, Minnesota and Winnipeg this week. That's two playoff teams and a third, the Wild, who was in the playoffs last season and is only being kept out because of the immense gap in quality between the Western and Eastern Conference.

The Bruins took a 2-1 lead into the third and had every reason to close out the Senators with the efficiency of 2013 Koji Uehara. Instead, they let the Senators leave town with two points and added one point to their own record to slip back ahead of the Panthers for the second wild card in the East for at least a few hours.
Coach Claude Julien used one word to sum up his team's seventh loss in the past nine games: "Average."

That was putting it nicely. It's not that the Bruins were particularly bad against Ottawa. It's that an average performance with so much on the line was a major disappointment. Julien read his team the riot act during a timeout in the second period and it paid off with some inspired play. Loui Eriksson scored the go-ahead goal. Then the Bruins went back into robotic mode. There never seems to be a consistent flow of energy and emotion from this team. One line a night plays the role of catalyst, the rest go through the motions.

Against the Blackhawks Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and Reilly Smith were the do-everything line. Against Ottawa it was the new trio of Chris Kelly centering former Vancouver Giants teammates Milan Lucic and Craig Cunningham. Memo to the Bruins: playoff teams typically lean on more than one line.

That's not to put all the blame on the forwards for the Bruins' losses and their ranking as 20th in the league in goals per game. The defense could obviously be tighter, as evidenced by the breakaways and cross-ice plays goaltender Tuukka Rask have to extinguish with cat-like reactions and groin-extending maneuvers. At this point, that defensive game tightening should start with the Bruins' captain. But Chara actually looked worse in his second outing, against a less-formidable and slower team, than he did in his first game back. He took two minor penalties, including a needless interference infraction against Ottawa forward Bobby Ryan. He misread Brad Marchand's intentions in the offensive zone and his pinch down the boards combined with Marchand's turnover to allow Mika Zibanejad to score on a second-period breakaway. And then Chara didn't even play in overtime.

"I can be here and talking about how difficult it is, but that's the way it is," Chara said. "My job is to get to that performance where I need to be as soon as I can, as quick as I can. It's coming, but again, it wasn't because of lack of effort or hard work, just I need to read the plays quicker and make quicker decisions."

The Bruins can't right now look to their captain for much inspiration. And their best offensive player continues to miss time with a mystery injury. Center David Krejci was out for the 10 straight games, and after the game Julien refused to talk about Krejci. That "no comment" told you more than any comment would have. Julien's frustrated that Krejci's not back yet and also frustrated that taking just one piece out of his lineup has made the Bruins so mediocre.

There's talk that the Bruins might look outside the organization for a lift, but Lucic isn't counting on anything other than a change in mindset improving the Bruins' results.

"I'm completely confident with the team and the players that we have here," he said. "We've shown it at times that we can be a top team if were willing to play the right way, but for whatever reason the consistency in our game hasn't been there this year and we have to find that more than anything. Whether they bring someone in or not, it's not going to change the fact that we need to create more consistency in our game and we have enough guys in here that have been there before."

The Bruins were ridiculed in November for beating up on the dregs of the League for points. Then their critics were proven right when the only points in the standings the Bruins got on their four-game road trip were in Glendale, Arizona. They return home and expectedly lose to Chicago. But a loss of any sort to Ottawa is unacceptable and might be the first sign that the Bruins at 15-13-2 on the season are joining the dregs.

The Bruins can't wait around for Krejci's return and they can't count the days until general manager Peter Chiarelli swings a deal. Heck, at this rate Chiarelli will have to consider being a seller. None of the Bruins want this team to be broken up, so they're going to have to prove their not a bottom-half team in the League and that they can beat top-notch opposition by playing with more focus and feeling.

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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