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How many times have we heard NHL players – including the Bruins – say something along the lines of: 'We've got to keep going with what we've got here' or 'we believe in everyone in this locker room' and 'We did it last year, we can do it again', during and after the trade deadline?
Whichever paraphrase you chose, it's spot-on. It's not what's not on the ice that matters; it's the desire and effort that is on the ice.
One key moment of the Bruins' 2009-10 NHL season to encapsulate this scenario was in Game 46, back on Jan. 14, 2010. The Bruins were on the road at the Shark Tank in San Jose to take on the (then) 30-10-7 Sharks. The B's were up to 85 man-games lost due to injuries to that point, and were without all top-3 centers – Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, Marc Savard – and two of their starting six defensemen – Andrew Ference and Mark Stuart.
The result of that game was a 2-1 shootout victory for Boston. How, with all of those players out? Hard work, desperation, confidence and perseverance. A few thing these current B's are riskily lacking.
When the Bruins' and its backers hit rock bottom after this team's uneventful and anticlimactic Mar. 18th rematch of the Pittsburgh Penguins and cantankerous Matt Cooke, Boston rebounded and went 8-3-1 in their final 12 games, capturing 17-of-24 possible points, to finish in the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference. The offensively challenged Bruins averaged just 2.36 goals-for per game up until that contest in March, yet upped their dismal average to a slightly more respectable 2.67 goals per game (32 total).
Even throughout this year's playoffs, Boston netted 16 goals-for in the first four games versus Philly, and averaged 2.67 against Buffalo in round one.
“It‘s in the playoffs. We‘re scoring more now in the playoffs than we did in the regular season, so there‘s all kind of stats here that defer.” head coach Claude Julien said after Game 5. “I don‘t care. I think at the end of the night, I just want to win the hockey game and we got to find ways to do that.”
Sure, David Krejci [4-4-8 in nine playoff games] is out for the remainder of the season, as is left-winger Marco Sturm [zero points in seven contests], and granted Simon Gagne has been back for the past two games for the Flyers. But those excuses, or reasons, are not legitimate for this Bruins' team to go goal-less for over 130 minutes.
The onus must be placed on the players themselves, the leaders in that locker room, and most of all, the coaching staff.
For the third-consecutive season with Julien behind the bench, the Bruins will be in an elimination-Game 7 – and for the second-straight year in the same round on the same exact day, May 14. After being up 3-0, the Bruins have somehow slipped and allowed Philadelphia back in this series, 3-3. Now history is starting to repeat itself since Julien has taken the reigns.
How does the coaching staff prepare its players from having three chances to eliminate the opposition to being eliminated themselves? How and why did it take Julien and the rest of the coaching staff behind the bench three games to changes up some line combinations and make adjustments to the Krejci-less team?
The Bruins' current playing, scoring, and winning issue run a lot deeper than the injuries to Sturm and Krejci. Julien must right-the-wrong before tomorrow night's Game 7 or else the Bruins will be singing the same tune as last year. And more importantly, these issues are not amid with what Chiarelli did or did not do before March 3.
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