Someone put an APB out for Seguin/By S. Bradley
BOSTON – We knew going into this week the Bruins would still be without Marc Savard, Marco Sturm and Johnny Boychuk, and David Krejci would probably be joining that star-packed trio on the sidelines.
But we just didn’t know exactly how shorthanded the Bruins would be until they mailed in two important divisional games against Montreal and Ottawa, capped by a listless 2-0 loss to the Senators tonight at TD Garden.
Despite their injury problems, the Bruins are still dressing the typical 18 skaters. That doesn’t mean there are 18 guys putting forth a full effort. And that’s why you now have a Bruins team that has lost four of five overall (with the one win featuring just 20 solid minutes of “Bruins hockey”) and three straight at home.
“We’re not in sync … and it starts from the back end. You’ve got to move the puck quick and you’ve got to move it well,” said frustrated Bruins coach Claude Julien, trying to spread the blame out among his entire roster. “Your forwards have to be able to handle those passes, which I thought they struggled with those tonight as well. And when you’ve got speed and you put the puck in deep and you’ve got some speed to go and retrieve it, then you’re in sync. Tonight we had none of that. Absolutely none. The transition from the back end was almost non-existent.
“We couldn’t handle a pass and then when we did end up dumping it, we never put it in an area where we gave our guys a chance to retrieve it. And that’s not to, by the way, take away the credit that the other team deserves. I think they played a great game. We were just a bad team tonight. Probably looked more like the team that played that first game in Prague.”
They might’ve looked like the team that opened the season in sour fashion in the Czech Republic or the one that allowed the hated Canadiens to leave town with an easy two points Thursday. The opening-night debacle could be forgiven. These last two defeats, they’re a major cause for concern. If some of Julien’s skating zombies don’t turn human again before the return of the club’s recovering wounded, this team might be in for a major tailspin.
The first few weeks of the season, we were ready to let Tyler Seguin and Jordan Caron share the Calder Trophy. Now it’s just a matter of how long the Bruins want to wait before sending Caron down to the Providence farm club and if they can figure out a way to get Seguin going by playing him out on the wing or by watching a few contests from the press box. The NHL game seems to have passed Caron by despite his solid positional play and instincts. He has even seemed overpowered in battles.
Boston was able to overlook Seguin’s lapses in the defensive end and his giveaways in critical areas when everyone else was clicking around him. Now his gaffes, like losing the draw clean that led to Ottawa’s first goal tonight, can’t be patched over. After firing two shots on net in each of the Bruins’ three previous games, he didn’t get a shot on Ottawa goaltender Brian Elliott tonight and posted a minus-2 rating.
Daniel Paille allegedly got back in the lineup after he was a healthy scratch for 10 straight contests. Other than winning a race to cancel an icing tonight, he has done as much in his three games back as he did while wearing a suit. Patrice Bergeron is now centering the first line, yet he’s still stuck on just two goals. Nathan Horton must be suffering from some sort of “Florida flashback” because he has gone score-less in four straight home games.
Matt Hunwick and Mark Stuart on the back end continue to look like a pair of prospects that have hit a plateau in their development and every time they try to do something to diversify their game, it winds up biting them in the rear. Boychuk can’t make his way back soon enough, but the difficult decision will be which defenseman gets to stay in the lineup rather than who comes out to make one spot open up for Boychuk.
Mark Recchi, who acquired his first fighting major since 2004 tonight, joked afterwards that he had to throw down the gloves because someone has to pick up the brawling slack now that Shawn Thornton (three goals) is a scorer. Humor is sometimes best when it’s true. In this case, it’s true and it’s sad.
Thornton, Brad Marchand and Gregory Campbell, even when not at their best tonight in the loss, still formed the only line that was working hard, forechecking and creating offense. Another Recchi statement from one last season might be even more appropriate for the Bruins’ current state than his quip about fighting. Recchi said during one rough stretch that there were too many passengers on the team. Well, there are plenty of guys that are just along for the ride right now.
It might be just coincidence that things started to go south once Boston was down to just 18 available skaters. You’d like to think it wouldn’t take the competition from training camp and from the early season – with two spare forwards and an extra D around – to light a fire under guys being paid to work their butts off for 60 or so minutes of hockey. You’d also like to think that they weren’t looking at Boston’s cap and thinking about how difficult it would be for general manager Peter Chiarelli to make a call-up or two, and a demotion or two, to shake things up. But maybe it’s just human nature to pull off the gas after things start out so peachy.
A combination of complacency, the rigors of the NHL wearing on a couple rookies and good old-fashioned lack of ability is keeping the Bruins from rising out of the middle of the pack in the East at this point. Everyone’s so worried about which guys are going to be sliced off the salary cap to make room for Savard and Sturm when they come off long-term injury. It might be more appropriate to pick a guy or two to jettison and make room for a prospect like Joe Colborne or Steve Kampfer, or maybe even a puck-moving defenseman currently skating with another organization (if such a player would even be available).
When you want to know whether the Bruins are playing well, you watch how they forecheck, how hard they work in the corners and whether they’re establishing a net-front presence. That’s as accurate a gauge as watching that button pop on the Thanksgiving turkey. Those things have been non-existent in the last week or so, and all in all the Bruins’ play is for the birds.
Just to be clear, “No Show” Joe Colborne is not going to be the answer for Boston anytime soon – especially centering a line w/ Ryder and Wheeler. Talk about a threesome of zombies. That being said, I don’t think Wheeler has looked completely horrible so far – he’s not playing up to his potential, sure, but I think Paille still has too much Buffaslug in his system and Ryder forgot he is battling for a spot on this club. Those two will be on the chopping block a lot sooner than Wheels/Seguin/Caron. And as far as the D goes, McQuaid is giving Stuart a run for his money (as far as that sixth man/third pairing goes) and Hunwick is essentially an AHL-caliber forward who belongs on a small market team.
Agreed Pat, Caron >>>>>> Wheeler. Wheeler has been just awful this year. Seguin has struggled, but you expect it, he’s going to have down games. Moving him to the wing would do a world of good.
Sort of a chicken little blog, they haven’t played well, but its sports … its going to happen, especially when you’re missing the quantity and quality of players the B’s are right now.
i now have serious doubt that matt kalman actually watches the game.
the game has passed caron by????? he was the one with a quality SH breakaway and put a solid shot ON NET. then a few minutes later was streaking down the ice next to blake wheeler who looked him off and decided to take his patented roof job to the 9th floor from 10ft away. also he has made a few serious rushes in the past few games that have created great opportunities for crappy players.
jordan caron has actually played better then lucic, if you factor in all the terrible passes and overrated hits (like the one on gonchar where he lost the puck). caron can be counted on on the PK!
Seguin is in a terrible spot…why did the bruins even bother bringing him up? skating him with PAILLE!!!!! and now thorty? what is the point? did anyone else see his great indirect pass to a lazy michael ryder who quickly gave up on the play? seguin is probably there 2nd most talented forward behind krejci. i think julien has skated him with the most bone headed selfish players as some sort of proving ground, when if he was given an opportunity on the 1st line would put up serious numbers while skating with defensively responsible players like horty and lucic.
this team is going nowhere with claude julien.
why does blake wheeler deserve more ice time? he plays on avg. 3 mins more then seguin 16 to 13 and has 4 pts to seg’s 6 also he has missed the net on golden opportunities consistently. twice against ott. he missed the net, on the aforementioned 2-1 with caron and on a cross ice pass from bergy.
if i was gm/coach i would make the following moves/lines. (assuming krejci comes back without PCS. and boychuk’s arm is not marco sturms knees/groin)
caron-krejci-horton
Lucic-Bergy-Seguin
Ryder-Colborne-Wheeler
Marchand-Campbell-Thornton
Chara-boychuk
Seidenburg-Ference
Stuart-Alexandrov
ive watched yuri 3 times in PVD he is clearly there best player on a shift in shift out basis, and is that smooth skating puck moving d. kampher is quality too.
Wheeler/hunwick should be dumped ASAP how do these chumps get contracts? to chiapets credit ference is playing great.
How about we let Seguin play with someone other then Ryder/Paille before we throw him under the bus? Talk about being shorthanded, poor kid doesn’t have a chance.
with Kreji and Savard and Boychuck back the B’s have a better team as long as they jettison Paille, Ryder, Wheeler,Stuart,Hunwick. They have not helped Seguin and Caron is fumbling some with Wheeler. So we know the cancers; I’d love to see Arneil, Colborne and Kamfer, but Claude would have heart failure
I agree. After watching last night, the one comment I made to my sister who missed the game was that Ryder and Wheeler are useless and Hunwick was terrible again. I feel for Seguin because it seems like his progress completely stopped and backtracked the minute he was put on a line with Ryder & Wheeler, and now it’s even worse with Ryder & Paille. As a rookie, pairing him with guys who are just mailing it in seems so detrimental. I understand that they can’t focus everything on what’s best for the rookie’s development, but I don’t think it’s surprising that his game is struggling since the lines were shifted. Maybe they should have sent him back to juniors. It can’t be good for him to be around the team the way it is now. They look disorganized and disheartened, and it absolutely looks like they’ve dropped back into the rut that was last season. How can any of them be complacent? With the way last year ended and how well this year started (other than the first game in Prague), you’d think they would all be fired up. After the adrenaline rush of the Pittsburgh game, as tired as they must have been, I expected they’d be flying high for the game against the Habs, but they barely showed up. Last night was even worse, and they all know they’re playing for their jobs because of the injury/cap issues. Is it coaching? Leadership in the lockerroom? Or do they really not have the talent to compete with the elite teams this year?
Awful game. I felt at times like I was watching paint dry. Maybe this will sound stupid, but in the third last night I was hoping Julien would have switched up the lines to give Seguin a shot at centering Horton and Lucic.
I have to disagree on Caron and Hunwick. these guys are playing very well. the problem lies in the “minus line” of Paille/Seguin/Ryder, Stuart/McQuaid, Rask (see http://www.nhl.com/ice/playerstats.htm?fetchKey=20112BOSSASAll&sort=plusMinus&viewName=plusMinus ). I believe Rask and McQuaid will come around sooner than the forwards and Stuart. they look awful out there, even though Stuart is clearly trying hard and Ryder is showing some offensive skill often enough to be occasionally impressive. Seguin can’t be using a roster space as a player whose only value is in a shootout. Rask needs a start in a sure win to build on. Paille should just go away. I’d ship Ryder, Wheeler and Paille off for just about anything in return, right now. they started so well and now they look awful. the playing time of the minus guys is quite a lot of the problem. the staff should act now to alter this team in a positive way, especially if that means removing the negatives.
I couldn´t agree more. The funny thing is that at first I thought Julien would have a major headache when Sturm and Savard came back from their injuries, because everyone was playing so fine that it wuld be a though decisison. But right now they are just making it easy for Julien.
I still don´t get the Paille promotion when we lost Krecji. Whey not Colborne or a skilled playmaker center? When you promote Paille you change much more then just the third line. You play Wheeler out of his position, you move Bergeron to another line and you break the chemistry of the second line. The only line that hasn´t been changed was the fourth and coincidentally or not it´s the only one playing hard, right now.