by Marc DesRosiers-Imagn Images
With five minutes left in the third period against the Ottawa Senators on Saturday, it looked like the Boston Bruins had the game under control. But from that point on, the Bruins were given a reality check — and another disappointing result in a season full of players like them.
First, Boston allowed a goal from Sens defenseman Nick Jensen to pull Ottawa within a single goal and bring the score to 5-4 in favor of the Bruins. Then, with just 12 seconds left in regulation, the Senators scored again to force overtime. And after that, the Bs failed to score in overtime and lost 6-5 in the shootout to the Sens. It was a thoroughly discouraging result for Boston, which has a 3-6-2 record in its last 11 games and fell from a wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference. And we’ve rarely, if ever, seen this current phase from the Bruins in recent years.
Is it time for Bruins management and fans to panic? Maybe it’s not a full-blown, sweaty armpit panic, but we’re getting dangerously close to true panic mode. And if they fall further out of playoff contention, Boston will have some tough decisions to make in the coming weeks.
The Bruins still have one of the weakest offenses in the NHL this season, with a goals per game average of 2.70 – the 26th worst average in the league. And somehow things have gotten worse in this category in the last few weeks. In fact, in their recent six-game losing streak, which began on New Year’s Eve and continued through January 9, there were four games in which they scored one goal or less. And even when the offense was successful, there were two games in that span where Boston scored four goals and still lost.
And now, with a particularly tough stretch of their schedule immediately ahead of them, the Bruins face several different paths forward. Will they stay with the status quo? Are they buyers or sellers at the close of trading? And do they need to make style changes on the ice to become a more dangerous team?
Well, from this writer’s perspective, a standing pat is the least likely possibility of regaining a playoff spot. At this point, we should know that former coach Jim Montgomery was not the main problem in Boston. And we should know that the Bruins don’t have the personnel to change their approach and play on “D” like the vintage-era New Jersey Devils. This current Boston group has structural flaws, and nothing interim coach Joe Sacco has done should suggest that the Bruins will flip a switch and suddenly be the true Stanley Cup threat they have been for the past few years.
With that in mind, it’s obvious that Boston needs to trade players – either in hopes of turning things around this season and winning a playoff spot, or with a long-term perspective. The Bruins currently have a salary cap hit of just over $5.71 million, so they can at least theoretically attempt to improve via the trade market. But here’s the bigger question: What does Boston have to offer that other teams would actually want?
It’s not like the Bruins have a boatload of outstanding UFAs to convert into long- or short-term assets by the March 7 trade deadline. Forward Trent Frederic is the highest-profile up-and-coming UFA player that could be traded, but it’s a player who has just seven goals and 14 points in 47 games. There will be no bidding war against anyone the Bruins would consider trading.
Related: Five NHL trade targets for Blackhawks’ Taylor Hall and Ryan Donato
As a result, Boston GM Don Sweeney has next to no leverage in trade discussions, especially if he plans to trade his team’s underperforming players to another team. And that means he has no choice but to rely on an internal turnaround. But that’s also a scary prospect for Bs fans who are completely disillusioned with what they’ve seen this season. There is an increasingly higher likelihood that the Bruins will be locked out for the rest of the year and will have to undertake a major restructuring of their roster this summer.
We can debate what the Bruins should do until we’re blue in the face, but here’s the truth: Not only are they currently out of a wild-card spot for the postseason, but they’re also in imminent danger of being overtaken by the Montreal Canadiens , who are just two points behind them in the standings and still have two games left against the Bruins. Similarly, Boston is just two points ahead of the Philadelphia Flyers, three points ahead of the New York Rangers (who have two games ahead of the Bruins) and four points ahead of the Detroit Red Wings (who also have two games in hand). on the Bs). The immediate future doesn’t look bright for Boston, to say the least.
For the first time in a long time, there are more gray clouds than silver linings hanging over the Bruins, and Sweeney is unable to engineer the kind of change that will send his team back to the postseason this spring. And for Boston fans used to dominating the play of their beloved Bruins, the terrible results the Bs are delivering could be a sign of even worse days to come.
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