The Boston Bruins have been a model franchise for years now, but this season has featured more bumps than they are accustomed to.
The Bruins fired head coach Jim Montgomery in November, but hit a new low Tuesday night after a 4-0 loss to the Edmonton Oilers extended their losing streak to five games. Boston has one win in seven games since the Christmas break.
"A lot of disappointment. Embarrassed ... Frustration," centre Elias Lindholm said after the game. "We weren’t even close tonight... There's a lot of things we need to fix."
The Oilers outshot the Bruins 39-26 in Tuesday's game, including 14-4 in the first period when they jumped out to a 1-0 lead. Overall, the game was a lot more lopsided than the two teams' previous meeting on Dec. 19, when the Bruins took a 2-0 lead in the first period but ultimately lost to the Oilers 3-2 in overtime.
“We’ve played against some of the top teams in the league and we’ve played them well. That was not the case tonight,” interim head coach Joe Sacco said after Tuesday's loss. “They were certainly playing at a higher level than we were right from the drop of the puck. They won the majority of races to pucks. They were quicker than us. They won more one-on-one battles. We pretty much got what we deserved tonight.”
The Bruins have made the playoffs for eight straight seasons and remain in the third playoff spot in the Atlantic after Tuesday's games with a 20-18-5 record. But the Tampa Bay Lightning are just one point back of the Bruins in the standings, and those two teams will face each other twice in the next seven days. If Boston can't stop its slide soon, the Bruins will be out of a playoff spot entirely.
“The good teams correct that and see things slipping,” centre Charlie Coyle said. “We need to do a better job of that and identifying that and making sure we’re doing the right things. It’s never going to be a perfect season. No team plays perfect. Every team has lulls. But we’ve got to stop the bleeding quicker here. We can’t let it seep in game after game like that with this little stretch going on right now.”
COMMENTS
When submitting content, please abide by our submission guidelines, and avoid posting profanity, personal attacks or harassment. Should you violate our submissions guidelines, we reserve the right to remove your comments and block your account. Sportsnet reserves the right to close a story’s comment section at any time.