Pluses:
+ Anton Khudobin, despite allowing three goals, was tremendous tonight. For the amount of time the Bruins spent in their own zone, and for the quality of shots he faced tonight, he was stellar. The Penguins are no joke when it comes to getting on the scoresheet - duh, that Crosby line is terrifying - and yet he was able to hold them off for nearly fifty-four minutes.
+ But seriously screw the Crosby line, the Bergeron line is still the best in hockey. Sweet goal by Tyler Seguin in the first.
+ The Bruins scored on the power play and have killed 18 straight penalties.
+ Awesome job by Dougie Hamilton to break up that one two-on-one rush in the second period. For all that he's still seeing some sheltered minutes, he's continued to look strong recently.
Minuses:
- Gif Claude sums up pretty much everything about the second two periods in that game. The Bruins collapsed into their own zone, didn't challenge Pittsburgh entering the zone really at all. They were unable to maintain pressure through the neutral zone, and allowed far too many shots to get through to Khudobin. Arguably, this collapse began even in the first period; luckily, Dennis Seidenberg made an incredibly excellent - one would argue Ryderian - move to save Khudobin's bacon.
- Brandon Sutter is pretty good, ok angry guy from the preview thread? I was wrong.
- There are too many back-to-backs coming up for this to become an excuse. "They got into Pittsburgh at 3am, woe!" Yeah, sorry, no, every other team has had to deal with this as well. In the words of Shawn Thornton - it's going to take a lot of sack to get through the rest of this schedule; the Bruins need to figure these back-to-backs out.
- The Bruins have to do something about that third defensive pair. Pittsburgh was smart about getting Crosby minutes against pairings that didn't involve Zdeno Chara, especially in the second period; the third pairing is, at this point, a total liability.
So yeah. Back at it on Thursday against the Panthers.