Post-Game Talk: GAME 31 - Sleeping in Seattle - Kraken 5 BRUINS 1

[Fenway]

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Time On Ice: BOS

Time On Ice: SEA

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SEATTLE — The long-and-winding road delivered the Bruins to another dead end Thursday night at Climate Pledge Arena.

Paced by a pair of Oliver Bjorkstrand goals, and the steady work of Philipp Grubauer (33 saves) in net, the Kraken dismissed the Bruins, 5-1, leaving the Black-Gold 0-for-2 on their five-game road trip.
That’s 0-for-2 with only two goals scored.

The Bruins will be in Vancouver Saturday night for stop No. 3 on their five-game Western swing.
The Kraken took an early 2-0 lead, Bjorkstrand connecting on a power-play goal only 24 seconds into play, followed by Jaden Schwartz at even strength.


With only 5:14 off the clock, the Bruins were faced with a two-goal uphill climb that they couldn’t erase.
After scoring only once in the road trip opener Tuesday night (an 8-1 shellacking in Winnipeg) the Bruins scored the lone goal in the second period when Brad Marchand scored on a penalty shot at the 10:28 mark.

Marchand was awarded the free chance when Brandon Montour, the one-time UMass-Amherst backliner, was charged with covering the puck in the crease as Marchand attempted to jam the puck over the goal line at the left post.

On his freebie, Marchand barreled in alone, faked a forehand shot in the low slot, and then slid a sleight-of-hand backhander through goalie Grubaeur’s five-hole. It was Marchand’s seventh career penalty-shot goal, tying him with Pavel Bure, the Russian Rocket, for the league’s all-time lead. The L’il Ball o’Hate previously was tied at No. 2 with Mario Lemieux.

The Kraken, currently out of the playoff mix in the West, put it out of reach in the third on goals by Vince Dunn and Bjorkstrand’s second of the night, boosting the lead to 4-1. Jared McCann closed out the scoring with an empty-netter with 1:54 to go.

Joonas Korpisalo made 16 saves on 20 shots in the Bruins' net.
The Bruins lost the services of Elias Lindholm midway through the second period. The underperforming center (31 games: 3-10–13) who signed a $54.25 million deal in July as an unrestricted free agent, sustained an upper-body injury.

If Lindholm can’t suit up Saturday night against the Canucks, the Bruins on Friday might consider calling up Matty Poitras from AHL Providence. Assigned to there a month ago, Poitras has wielded a hot stick the last two weeks, and the Bruins now are desperate for offensive pop.

The Bruins, who began the trip after winning a season-high four straight games, now stand 7-4-0 since Joe Sacco took over as interim coach upon the dismissal of Jim Montgomery.

The loss left the Bruins with a 6-7-1 record on the road this season.

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[Thirty Seven]

Hopefully Bussi plays next game and the guys play in front of him

 

[Aussie Bruin]

I managed to watch half of this one and it was enough. Enough to firmly close the book on this season and remove any lingering hope that this team might still be a legit contender. They are not and there is nothing that can feasibly be done that will make them so. They had their little new coach bounce but reality has now returned to smack them hard in the face and it's not pretty. This group is miles away.

Sweeney just has to just accept that he got this one wrong and the organization needs to switch its thinking to next year and beyond. By all means have a look at trade options, but the only moves that should be made before the deadline are ones that will (hopefully) benefit the Bruins long term. No rentals or gap-filling or other nonsense.

There is lots that is going to need to be thought through and determined. My gut says the new, post 2010s core is a total bust and that means going right back to the drawing board and THAT means a long rebuilding phase. But let's not get too ahead of ourselves. For now, ride out the season, play some kids, see who on the roster really wants to dig in and stick around, and start thinking hard about where to from here.

Boston was well and truly due this type of season. Sucks that's it's finally here, but best to accept it and look clear-eyed at the future rather than clinging on desperately to what can no longer be.

 

[BiteThisBurrows]

I don't think I'm alone in saying that I'm getting tired of Brick saying things like "they had a lot of offensive zone time there" and making a ton of excuses. He seemed so objective when they were a winning team, or maybe it was Jack's influence? In any event it's getting pretty repetitively lame.

Maybe this team is trying to finally give the Sabres a chance to make the playoffs? This is the worst they've been in a really long time. ALL of Sweeney's signings are below expectation or just plain awful. What a waste of cap space.

 

[Blitzkrug]

I turned the game off after the first. Looks like i didn't miss much. Another game where they had no structure in their own end, could barely score against a goalie who shouldn't be in the league at this point and also couldn't buy a save from their own goalie.

Jim Montgomery wasn't the biggest issue. Joe Sacco is showing that. They beat up on garbage cans last week and when the moment comes to play real teams (Seattle might be floating around 500 but i recommend you go and look at their split between goalies.), they get their skulls caved in.

"Just keep being patient, it'll turn around" My man, it's 31 games into the season. There's no wonder weapon, or some other magical solution waiting over the horizon. They already fired the coach with little effect, they can't trade anybody because they barely have anyone worth a damn and the couple pieces you do have only make the problem worse in the short term. Little to no help coming in the minors since i sure as hell don't want to expose Lysell or Poitras (again) to this shitshow. There is no magic playoff run waiting.

You paid 8+ million dollar for a goalie who as of right now looking at his stats to starts ratio, is probably a bottom three starter in the league with as far as i can tell, the only guys being worse are Elvis Merzlikins and Alex Georgiev. You paid 54 million dollars for a supposed top 6 center only for him to basically not exist. Your cornerstone player on offense has been playing poor compared to his standards. But even he's not as bad as your supposed franchise defenseman, who used some his 9+ million dollar yearly salary to go get a f***ing lobotomy in the offseason.

Don Sweeney looks at this, wipes the sweat off his brow and congratulates himself on a job well done and then proceeds to blame everyone but the jackass responsible for this.

"They are who we thought they were." Won't get much better with the Canucks and Oilers being 2 of their next 3 games. Connor McDavid might actually challenge Sittler's single game point record at this pace.

And to clarify, i'm not blaming Sacco for this either. As blah as i was on him, it's so obvious this mess goes beyond any coach's capabilities to fix.

Source on the swayman stats; Obviously sorted by GP to get an idea of what a start's workload looks like right now but just look at Sway's stats compared to pretty much everyone around him. Awful.

 

[smithformeragent]

Water seeking its level. No need to overthink this.

They beat up on garbage after the coaching change.

Now we’re right back where we were a few weeks ago.

 

[Mick Riddleton]

Nothing to see here, we only have 2 scoring threats. One guy is old and on his way out and the other is targetted and probably wants to be out of here. We let Jake, JVR and Heinen walk for free. I would rather have them than Swayman.

Sweeney built a team to beat Florida but they can only beat bad teams. It is what it is a team of low skilled checkers, only in it because of how bad the Atlantic is. I got fooled too by the coaching change but it was always about lack of talent.