The Bruins went on their two-game road swing hoping to prove their hot 9-2-1 start was the real thing. Instead, they came home with a hard reset.
Boston lost 2-1 to the Carolina Hurricanes, then followed it up 48 hours later with a 4-1 defeat against the St. Louis Blues. In those two games, the Bruins scored just twice on 48 shots combined and were outscored 6-2.
After the loss in St. Louis, captain David Pastrnak didn’t sugarcoat it.
“Tough road trip. Didn’t play to our standard.
The biggest takeaway is when we are winning, we flip the page, we come to work the next day and get better,” Pastrnak said, per BostonBruins.com. “It’s hard, but we’re going to do the same.
We have a big game Saturday, so we’re going to get home, get better tomorrow and get back in the winning column.”
The trip also trimmed Boston’s Atlantic Division cushion over the last three days. And there’s no escaping the missed chance in Carolina, where Matthew Poitras had a backhander toward an empty net in the third period of a 1-1 game before the defending Stanley Cup champs buried the winner.
Still, the bigger issue was the Bruins’ own end. They were loose there on the trip, and it finally caught up to them after a run in which they had gotten away with it more often than not.
That showed up on Carolina’s tying goal Tuesday, then again in the second period against St. Louis.
Philip Broberg and Robert Thomas both found space in the slot and each picked their spot on Jeremy Swayman to make it 3-1. When Boston is executing its system, those kinds of breakdowns don’t happen.
If there was one stretch that captured the whole trip, it was the third period in St. Louis. The Bruins held a 14-2 shot edge in the frame and still didn’t score, while the Blues cashed in a power-play goal on one of their two shots.
Now Boston heads home to face the Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday afternoon, with a chance to answer a road trip that went sideways in a hurry.
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