Down 2-0, Bruins coach Jim Montgomery tried for a momentum change by pulling goalie Jeremy Swayman. Boston has given up 17 goals in the three losses.
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COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Blue Jackets beat the Bruins Monday night and it was their Red Wave that carried them to the 5-2 win at Nationwide Arena.
Columbus made history by becoming the first NHL team to have four Russians score in the same game. The rising stars continually capitalized on a Boston team that has gotten into a disturbing pattern of sloppy play in all three zones.
The Blue Jackets took a 2-0 lead early in the second period on goals from Dmitri Voronkov (jam shot at the near post past Jeremy Swayman) and Ivan Provorov (whistler from the right dot with comrade Voronkov setting a perfect screen).
Looking for a change in momentum, Jim Montgomery pulled Swayman (17 saves) not long after Provorov’s tally.
“It was just a decision I made to try and slow the game down and also let the entire team know that we need to pick it up, we need to go north,” said Montgomery.
Judging by Swayman’s body language, it was pretty clear he disagreed with the move.
“He asked me why, and I said we’ll discuss it [Tuesday],” Montgomery said.
Though the Bruins showed a little more jump after the switch to Linus Ullmark, the spark that Montgomery was looking for never materialized.
“I didn’t look too much into it, but we are super confident in both our goalies, so let’s try to get a little spark there,” defenseman Hampus Lindholm said. “We were a little bit maybe dead there, so we got going a little bit, but we need to find a way to string 60 minutes together.”
That’s been a tough task for the Bruins since last week in Florida. Boston (14-4-3) has lost three straight and has allowed 17 goals in that stretch.
“I thought every part of our game was tough, to be honest. I thought we had a pretty good start to the first eight to 10 minutes, and then they slowly but surely started to take over the game,” Montgomery said. “I thought we lost stick battles. I don’t think we were physical. So, there were a lot of areas of our game that we just flat out weren’t good enough.”
“I got to review the tape and I mean, the message is we’re not playing to our standard that we believe is how we should play with the puck and without the puck,” Montgomery said. “So, there’s a lot of things to address and move forward, but we’ve got to move forward.”
Lindholm said there’s no time to dwell and that he’s “already focused on the next one.” That’s the advice he’ll give his teammates, too.
“There’s a few things we’re going to go through as a team that we’ve got to learn [from] when we get back as a team with the coaches and me personally,” he said. “And what I would tell any young guy in this league is, it’s 82 games, you just come up [and be ready] for the next game. Everyone is in this league for a reason: they’re good players. You have to get back the next game and show why.”
