The Bruins will face the Minnesota Wild Saturday night in a back-to-back matchup after falling to the Winnipeg Jets Friday at Canada Life Centre.
Boston Bruins coach Jim Montgomery had a feeling things would go sideways for his team against the Winnipeg Jets Friday night.
He was right.
The 5-1 loss exposed the Bruins’ weak down-low defensive coverage and dire need for an offensive spark. It also didn’t help that the Jets were ready to battle from puck drop.
“I was worried this morning – I don’t know why, it wasn’t really from anything that I had noticed, but I just had that feeling,” Montgomery said to reporters Friday.
“I thought [the Jets] were really good in all facets of their game. I thought the biggest thing is they won one-on-one battles. We weren’t good, they were really good.”
Winnipeg gave the Bruins little time and space to find their game with a tenacious forecheck that consistently shut Boston’s breakout down at the red line. While the Jets only held a 1-0 advantage after the opening frame, the damage could’ve been far worse. Jeremy Swayman was the only thing keeping the B’s in the game at that point, and went on to make 28 total saves.
“I think our start wasn’t very good. We didn’t come to play tonight and that’s on us,” Brandon Carlo, who scored Boston’s only goal of the night, said to reporters. “Obviously they did, and it showed especially in the first period and then throughout the game. We didn’t really get much momentum at any point.”
On a power play that came into the night ranked 24th in the NHL at 16.7 percent, Jets forward Nino Niederreiter cashed in twice on the man advantage against the Bruins’ previously league-leading 87.5 percent penalty kill.
While credit must be paid to Winnipeg for finding its slots and creating its chances, Boston made it far too easy to knock pucks past Swayman due to lazy lapses in coverage. All five of the Jets’ goals came from leaving a guy open in front of the net, and doing more watching than defending.
“Hard, taking away time and space, they’re physical, their puck support is excellent in all three zones and they just keep coming up with pucks,” Montgomery said of Winnipeg’s play. “We had zero offensive zone time, they had tons of it.”
Luckily for the Bruins, they have a chance for redemption before hitting the holiday break. The B’s will face the Minnesota Wild at Xcel Energy Center Saturday night in the final leg of their back-to-back road trip. The Wild were at TD Garden Tuesday and beat the Bruins 4-3 in overtime.
Boston is on the brink of extending its losing streak to four games – which would mark the longest win drought of the season – but the players are relying on short-term memory to help them refocus for the Wild.
“That’s the part about this league – we’re fortunate to not dwell on things because we know there’s another game tomorrow and there’s so much more opportunity to make things better,” Swayman said to reporters.
Carlo echoed a similar sentiment.
“We have the opportunity to leave this in the rear-view mirror and have another opportunity tomorrow,” Carlo said. “We’re just going to continue to move forward.”