“Playing a 60-minute game” is such a common hockey cliche for a reason, and the Boston Bruins showed it Saturday night.
Boston saved perhaps the best two periods of its California road trip for last, but they were not enough to make up for the inauspicious start to Saturday night’s 2-1 loss to the Los Angeles Kings at Staples Center.
The Kings nearly tripled up the Bruins in shots on net in the first 20 minutes and scored the game’s first goal with just 51 seconds remaining in the opening frame. Tanner Pearson did the honors, deflecting a Luke Schenn shot past Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask after Boston coughed the puck up in the offensive zone.
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The tide of the game turned around the five-minute mark of the second period, but by that point, the damage had been done. Alec Martinez scored less than three minutes into the second to make it 2-0 in favor of the home team, and although the Bruins outshot the Kings 23-7 over the final two frames and got a goal from Tyler Randell, they were unable to solve L.A. goaltender Jonathan Quick a second time.
Quick stopped 27 of the 28 shots he faced in the win, including all 11 the Bruins sent his way during four unsuccessful power plays.
“I didn’t think we played as well in the first as we did in the second and third, and we probably needed to be better prepared to face that kind of a team and that kind of a challenge there,” Bruins coach Claude Julien said in a postgame interview with NESN’s Jack Edwards and Andy Brickley.
“It took us a whole period to basically figure it out and decide that we were going to push a little bit harder there in certain areas and be a little bit more assertive. It’s unfortunate. We had our chances. We had power plays that allowed us an opportunity to at least tie the game, and that didn’t happen. We didn’t produce. And even at the end there, we pushed hard, the effort was there, but no points in this game and no points in this trip. So, we’re extremely disappointed as a group.”
The Bruins came away with zero of a possible six points from their three-game West Coast swing, losing three consecutive games in regulation for the first time since late December. They’ll finish the regular season without a win over a California team, going 0-6 in such games and scoring two goals or fewer in five of them.
Saturday’s loss dropped Boston to third place in the Atlantic Division, though it trails the first-place Florida Panthers by just three points.
“We came out here, we knew it was a big challenge for us, and it was,” center Patrice Bergeron said on “Bruins Overtime LIVE” on Saturday. “You could definitely see that. I thought (Saturday night) was a better 40 (minutes) in the second and third period, but by then, it was a little too late. They’re good teams for a reason, and down the road that’s what we’re going to face, and we’ve got to make sure we’re ready for that kind of hockey. We have 10 games (left), and it’s not going to be easy. We have to keep pushing forward and get better. We know the standings are tight, but it’s up to us, and it’s in our hands.”
Thumbnail photo via Kelvin Kuo/USA TODAY Sports Images
