Bruins vs. Lightning 12/12/19 RECAP: Bruins’ special teams let them down again, lose 3-2 to Tampa.

First Period:

Y’know the sick part about this game is that for a good portion of it, the Boston Bruins ended up looking pretty good, as after a dust-up between Zdeno Chara and Pat Maroon, and Brad Marchand getting a fantastic opportunity with Patrice Bergeron with the finish! 1-0 Bruins!

Oh if only the rest of the game could’ve been this good...

2nd Period:

The Bruins took a penalty to abdicate the lead of this game for the rest of eternity. Steven Stamkos was left undefended.

Unrelenting sadness ensued. 1-1.

Thankfully, the Bruins shut things down, with Rask making a bunch of absolutely phenomenal saves to keep things tight.

The period of unrelenting pain:

Another penalty, another good save by Rask...

But not enough saves to matter. 2-1 Bolts.

Things didn’t improve, as a turnover in their own end had the Bruins all bunched up high, then Steven Stamkos got another chance to shoot effectively undefended.

I N F I N I T E S A D N E S S. 3-1 Bolts.

Thankfully, the Bruins would attempt to mount a comeback, as a net-scramble resulted in chaos in front of Vasilevskiy, and John Moore cleaned up for a nifty goal nobody saw coming! 3-2 Bolts.

That looked all the world like Anders Bjork scored it, but Moore got his stick in there. Hockey’s funny like that.

Regretfully...that’d be the end of the scoring. And Boston would drop their 5th game in a row.

Game Notes:

• Tuukka Rask finished with a .903 SV%. He tried his damnedest to keep his team in this. They did not reciprocate. It will not get better with Halak, as you saw last game.
• Your TOI leaders was far and away Charlie McAvoy, who played almost 28 minutes tonight.
• Anders Bjork and Danton Heinen have gone 8 games without a goal. Brett Ritchie last scored back in October. The middle six depth once again has something deeply wrong with them, or they’re all mercilessly unlucky. The Fancystats that track luck say that isn’t the case, so it would behoove them to start acting like their jobs are on the line, because they all very well could be for the rest of the calendar year.
• The Depth in general seriously has to step up. Boston looked quite Edmontonian in their ineptitude whenever the Bergeron line was off the ice. Say what you will of the individual players on it, at least they were able to mount possession time of some kind. Serious change needs to be considered before 2020 rolls around.
• This team got torn to shreds possession-wise. Something’s gotta change there or things for the second half of the year could get really gross.
• The great thing about the NHL in general is that you can play like ass for 60 minutes and if you score during any one of them you can be ultimately forgiven for most of it. Regretfully, John Moore’s goal in the third period does not entirely absolve him of the rest of his game, which indirectly resulted in Boston losing their lead for good.
• Of course, the killer right now is special teams. Boston’s power play has gone stagnant, and tonight the PK was just not going to do it against one of the most lethal teams on the man-advantage in the league. You cannot get that many opportunities and do nothing with it. And that was what killed the B’s tonight.

Next game’s against Florida on Saturday.

We’ll see if the B’s show up for that one.