Ooof.
The Boston Bruins were shut out by the Edmonton Oilers, 4-0, at the TD Garden Tuesday night by their opponent who outplayed and outshot them for 60 minutes.
“We pretty much got what we deserved here tonight,” Interim head coach Joe Sacco said.
Jeremy Swayman made 35 saves in the lost. Adam Henrique scored twice in the win for Edmonton — once in the first and then again in the second period — while Connor McDavid beat Swayman’s blocker on a breakaway and Viktor Arvidsson netted an empty-net goal.
The Bruins were dominated by Edmonton who got more pucks to the net and won 1-on-1 battles from the start, but also couldn’t match their compete level with their lack of urgency.
The Bruins only had 12 shots on net through the second period as the Oilers began to pull away the game.
With the loss, the B’s are now are on a five-game losing streak as the team a need to get back to basics, regroup and find its identity again to be able to stick to a game plan.
“We got to stop the bleeding quicker here,” Charlie Coyle said. “We can’t let it seep in game after game like that with this little stretch going on right now.”
Here are the game’s (Edmonton’s) highlights:
First period:
From behind the net, Corey Perry found Adam Henrique in the slot where he put a wrist shot top-shelf past Jeremy Swayman’s glove at 6:33 of the first period. 1-0 Oilers.
Second period:
After Trent Frederic dropped the gloves with Corey Perry and he earned an extra two minutes for roughing, Pavel Zacha had a shorthanded chance. But then the play came right back down the other way. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins forwarded a pass to Connor McDavid who had a breakaway on Swayman and put a wrist shot past his blocker at 11:11 of the second period on the power play. 2-0 Oilers.
Henrique got his second of the night with a quick release in the slot after receiving a pass from Jeff Skinner from the behind the net and the shot beat Swayman’s blocker at 16:35 of the second period. 3-0 Oilers.
Third period:
Viktor Arvidsson scored an empty-net goal at 16:25 of the third period. Final score: 4-0 Oilers.
Game notes
- “They were certainly playing at a higher level than we were right from puck drop,” Sacco said postgame. There’s no denying the Bruins and Oilers weren’t even playing the same game tonight. The Oilers were faster all over the ice, winning puck races and just handling the puck, moving it through all three zones within any problems. The Bruins, on the other hand, just weren’t playing to their strength which has been wearing teams down and grinding it out and couldn’t execute their game plan.
- Sacco said his team needs to get better defensively covering the slot. He felt they reverted back to some problems from the Toronto game in that area and that they need to do a better job recognizing were danger is coming from.
- Stuart Skinner left the first period with 5:25 left after a collision with Nikita Zadorov. The Bruins made the kill on his goaltender interference penalty, but still couldn’t get offensive momentum on their side. Skinner returned to start the second period and finished the game.
- After the game, Elias Lindholm threw around words like disappointment, embarrassment and frustration when thinking about what happened on the ice. He said he felt the team was playing good hockey before the holiday break, but has slipped since then. “Our details are…we start cheating…pretty soft to play against so I mean there’s a lot of things that we need to fix,” he said.
- Brad Marchand soundbite: “We’ve kind of gotten away a little bit from the way that we were playing to have success and so we just have to get back to playing that same way,” he said. “We played into their hands,” Marchand said about Tuesday’s game. “They (Oilers) are an incredible transition team and played into that a bit, so we just have to be smarter. The way that we want to attack games, and when we put a game plan together, we didn’t execute it the way that we should have.”
- That regrouping and refocusing, like Coyle and Marchand kept reiterating, is to simplify their game. Marchand said the Bruins find success when they work first, are tight defensively and are able to transition with those tools to create offense. “Eventually we just kind of wait for teams to break,” Marchand said. “We’re getting away from that. We’re opening it up and that’s just not how we’re built.
- The Bruins will head to Tampa Bay on Thursday for a 7 p.m. faceoff against the Lightning as the annual mom’s trip commences.