Recap: Sloppy play dooms B’s in 3-2 loss to Tampa Bay

In what was a tight, back-and-forth game, the Bruins only had themselves to blame for the disappointing result.

Victor Hedman’s goal late in the third period capped off a comedy-of-errors sequence for the B’s and stood up as the game-winner, as Tampa held on for a 3-2 win.

Brandon Hegel started the scoring with a power play goal for Tampa midway through the first period. Generally, uh...it’s not a great idea to leave a guy that wide open two feet from the net. 1-0 Tampa.

That would be the only goal until around 17 minutes into the second period, when Brad Marchand beat Andrei Vasilevskiy with a shot through traffic to make it a 1-1 game.

Nikita Kucherov benefited from a questionable (at best) face-off drop and ripped a shot past Linus Ullmark a minute into the third period to make it 2-1 Tampa.

Around 90 seconds later, the Czechs connected and Pavel Zacha finished the play to make it a 2-2 game.

This entire play was...yeah. Victor Hedman shoots into a gaping cage for the eventual game-winning goal, making it 3-2 Tampa.

The B’s applied pressure with the extra attacker, but couldn’t break through. Tampa extends their home winning streak to 11, while the B’s suffer their 6th regulation loss of the season.

Game notes

• Your take on this game is going to depend largely on your mood tonight: either it was a comedy of errors that still ended as a one-goal game or was a wake-up call that half-efforts won’t work against good teams. I’m on the former side of the fence, though I guess both can be partially true too.
• I don’t think we usually get comments from the league on things like face-off incursions, but I’d be curious what the explanation was for allowing the face-off prior to Kucherov’s goal to stand. Maybe there’s no precedent for calling a play back that immediately resulted in a goal? It all happened so quickly, but the face-off itself was comically bad.
• Speaking of comedy, that Brandon Carlo collision...man. A Tampa 2-on-1 seems foiled by a bad pass, and then Carlo comes out of nowhere and just bundles his own goalie. I guess Hedman deserves a shred of credit for picking the net out of that pile of bodies, but yikes.
• Regardless of the Carlo/Ullmark collision, the stretch in the third period from around 15 minutes up to the Hedman goal was probably the worst I remember seeing the B’s play in quite a while. It seems silly to single guys out when so many were involved: lazy passes, instances of trying to do too much instead of making the simple play, bad decisions that led to icings, etc.
• Per Natural Stat Trick, Tampa had the advantage in high-danger scoring chances, 12-9 at even strength. Tampa was also credited with 4 HD chances on the power play, while the Bruins failed to register one any on their two power play opportunities.
• It was a surprisingly poor night at the face-off dot for Patrice Bergeron, who won just 39% of his draws.
• He returned shortly after and finished the game, but Charlie McAvoy’s shoulder-first collision into the end boards was certainly cause for concern, considering it’s the same shoulder he had surgically repaired in the offseason. Hopefully he’s no worse for the wear.
• 33% of the Bruins’ regulation losses this season have come in Florida, a state where nothing good happens.

Back at it Saturday in...ah man, Florida again.