Bruins lose 5-4 in a classic example of everything going wrong at once

[walks over to decanter of whiskey, opens with teeth, pours into tumbler, then drinks the whiskey from the decanter.]

Our very own Chris Abraham had the dubious honor of chronicling this nonsense. Thank him. Love him. Praise him.

First Period:

It started bad...

Got a little better...

Got bad again...

And stayed bad until the end. 3-1 Habs. Just a shambolic period of hockey.

2nd Period:

Things improved a bit! Connor Clifton got himself a real NHL goal after several games of struggling to make good things happen!

Anders Bjork now has half of his NHL best goal total when he tied the game up! 3-3!

...And then Victor Mete took advantage of a maybe-interfered with Rask to make it 4-3 Habs again.

And we end the period with that score.

Third Period:

The B’s tied it early with Sean Kuraly getting a nifty assist from a lucky bounce and the mayor of walpole.

And then CHARLIE COYLE SCORED TO MAKE IT 5-4! THINGS WERE GOOD AGAIN!

...And then they challenged for offsides. He was determined to be. Back to a tied game.

Naturally, with how this game has gone, every good thing was met with a bad...

...and Montreal walks away the winner of a 5-4 game.

Game Notes:

• Rask was not good at all. .839 SV% is absolutely not what you want from your “starter”...Granted, Price wasn’t much better, but still. He did take full responsibility for his play, and for what it’s worth I hope he learns something from a night like tonight.
• And a big part of why he wasn’t much better other than individual performance was the absolutely apocalyptic puck security and team defense in front of him. If the 2nd period of monday’s game was the worst individual period effort the Bruins put up this year? Then this was bell-to-bell the sloppiest game they have played to date. Pucks were sitting in the defensive zone unattended by the blue line and often being nonchalantly batted at in order to possibly get it out and that’s just not acceptable given what we know about this team. Sure, there’s been some puck security and individual hiccups here and there throughout the season but normally at least one or two lines are able to settle things down and take charge. Almost nobody was able to get a clear on the first try, and the defense corps as a whole deserves a big fat dunce cap for the absolutely disastrous effort they put in.
• Offsides review should have a hard time limit of 20 seconds from entering the zone. It sucks, it’s the spirit of the rule horsecrap, it’s the only thing that’s kept the B’s from not having regulation losses so far this year. It also denied Zach Senyshyn a place on the scoreboard tonight.
• On the bright side, Boston really has something special in Danton Heinen specifically for games like this. He was one of the only Bruins making intelligent decisions with the puck all night and it really helped them stay in this to the bitter end. Anders Bjork had a really solid game, and Zach Senyshyn also looked pretty good in his limited TOI. Against a lesser team (like...say, their next opponent), I’ll bet he gets that point back.
• 15 games, 15 goals. David Pastrnak is absolutely legendary.
• Torey Krug and Pastrnak ended up being your TOI leaders,each playing 21 minutes.
• No seriously offside review should have a hard limit on it.
• Puck security drills until their hands fall off should be a big part of the B’s practice in preparation for their next few games.
• Boston’s last regulation loss was on October 10th. If they’re gonna lose like this once every 6 weeks, I think I can at least tolerate it. Not like or accept it...but tolerate it.

The Bruins get a couple days off for the bag skate they earned, then take on the Detroit Red Wings at the Little Caesar’s Arena. Puck drop is at 7:30pm EST.

We’ll see you there.