Undermanned Bruins with Another Lackluster effort in 6-2 Loss to Ducks

The Boston Bruins nightmare season can’t end soon enough.

The punchless Bruins put forth another pitiful effort en route to a 6-2 loss to the Ducks in Anaheim. Boston (30-34-9) has now lost seven straight.

The Bruins – if you can even call them that anymore – looked overmatched once again. Their roster decimated by trades and injuries, the B’s barely put up a fight, mustering only 9 shots through the game’s first two periods while allowing more than 5 goals for the 5th time in 7 games.

David Pastrnak, who tallied Boston’s first goal, his 35th of the season acknowledged after the game that this is as rough as he’s seen it in his 11 seasons wearing the Black and Gold.

“We just don’t play with the puck enough and a lot of it is our own doing and [I’m] not taking anything away from them. They were better at every aspect of the game today but that’s too many times that happened this year,” Pastrnak said. “So, it’s really hard to find words to try to fix it. It’s game 73. We shouldn’t even be standing here and talking about games like this. This is the kind of game that should happen in the first 10, maximum 15 games of the start of the season. We are at game 73. It’s a tough time.”

The Ducks took the lead in the first with the Bruins on the man advantage. The Ducks caught the Bruins napping and broke out 2 on 1 as Alex Killorn fed Leo Carlsson, who buried it top shelf past Jonas Korpisalo to give the Ducks a 1-0 lead. The shorthanded goal was the 11th allowed by the Bruins, tying them at first in the NHL with the New York Rangers.

Anaheim doubled the lead when Bruins D-man Michael Callahan failed to keep the puck in at the Anaheim blue line springing the Ducks on another odd man rush. Nikita Nestorenko scored when his shot deflected off Callahan’s skates 5 hole on Korpisalo.

 

The Bruins were gifted a golden opportunity to get back in the game, and after a faceoff win in the offensive zone, top-ten NHL scorer David Pastrnak snapped it past John Gibson, making it the first power-play goal for the Bruins since March 11th, and the game 2-1.

If there’s one thing at which the Bruins excel it’s giving up goals late in periods and they did it again on Wednesday night, allowing a pair in the final 2:03 of the second period. The second, a harmless flip in from a tough angle by former Boston College star Cutter Gauthier that fooled Korpisalo came with 1:15 left. That marked the 30th time this season the Bruins have allowed a goal in the final two minutes of a period.

In the third period Carlsson added his second of the game and Mason McTavish pushed the Ducks lead to 6-1 before Morgan Geekie rounded out the scoring tallying hits 26th of the season for Boston.

The Bruins road trip wraps up on Saturday in Detroit. The B’s are now 6 points back in the Wild Card with four teams ahead of them and 9 games to play. Even if the playoffs are starting to feel out of reach, Pastrnak hopes the Bruins approach the remaining games on the schedule with more focus and effort than they’ve shown so far on this trip.

“Well, we have nine games left and we have to leave it all out there and it doesn’t seem like that’s been the case the last couple games, so you still need to build something in this group and be connected,” he said. “And it’s obviously early after the game, so we don’t want a lot of emotional talk, but we have to be better than that and start building something here because right now we have nothing.”