The look on Matt Bartowski's face (number 43 on the top right corner of the above picture) just about says all that needs to be said about last night's game.
The Bruins did not want to lose the game but instead of getting involved in the play and going back to basics, they sat there as bystanders, hanging their goaltender out to dry and as a result walking out of the Joe Louis Arena last night victims of their largest loss of the season and their first 5 goal loss since March 13th, 2012. A total of 115 games.
A 6-1 score is either a really good thing or a really bad thing and after last night's dismantling by the Redwings, we know for sure that in this case, 6-1 is a bad thing.
"It was pretty much everything we didn’t want to see out there." Patrice Bergeron said of his team that shot the puck just 17 times. "We didn’t execute. Yeah, they played a good game but we pretty much handed it out to them," he proceeded to say. "No disrespect to them but it wasn’t even close to playing our game, it wasn’t even close to executing. We left Tuuks out to dry most of the night and you definitely can’t win playing like that."
For Boston, the trouble started early on when the Redwings, who despite losing the early physical battle spent most of the opening period in the Bruins zone. These neutral zone deficiencies within the Bruins game were pounced upon when Detroit scored their first goal of the night.
After Johan Franzen took a mid-frame high sticking penalty, the Bruins dominated the ensuing power play only to forget the man coming out of the box thus leaving no one back to defend the Boston net. The Bruins were at a standstill as 3 Wings came charging into the crease and the puck soon ended up behind Tuukka Rask. For fans, the confusion and anger at the Bruins incompetency when defending was only amplified as the game went on and the Wings proceeded to pound in 3 quick goals in the second period.
"That’s why I called a timeout," Claude Jullian said of his decision to call his lone timeout following the 3rd of those quick goals. "What I saw from our team was all of the sudden we started to really get away from our game and everybody was trying to do everybody else’s job and when you get to that stage, it just gets worse...Everything we did tonight was just disastrous. We dominated on face-offs, that’s a positive, but I think the rest, from the back end to the front end…We just didn’t generate much."
In truth, it took the Bruins all of 58 minutes of game action to generate their first goal, one scored with just over 2 minutes to go in the game that did a little to boost morale more than anything else.
As it stood, the Bruins were being shut out until Jarome Iginla potted his 5th goal of the season following a nice play down in the Bruins defensive zone that had failed them all night long. Iginla took it himself from the mid-line and charged ferociously through the neutral zone before banking the puck off of Jonas Gustuffson and then potting his own rebound via a sliding flick that just managed to thread itself along the inside of the post.
It was not pretty but you have to give them points for never giving up. They tried to score, and they did but in a more crucial facet of last night loosing like this can often help a team more than it can hinder them. Call it humiliating, call it simply loosing but so long as you do not fall into a prolonged slump losses like this, however unpleasant serve as wake up calls.
Well, wakeup call felt.
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