TAMPA \u2014 The Boston Bruins allowed the winning goal on Saturday in the most unusual of situations: what should have been a routine save for Jeremy Swayman.<\/p>\n
The Bruins\u2019 goalie is on pace to be a Vezina Trophy finalist. Before Saturday\u2019s 3-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning, Swayman had saved a league-high 28.6 goals above expectation, according to MoneyPuck. He is the No. 1 reason the Bruins are comfortable as the No. 1 wild-card entry.<\/p>\n
So when Darren Raddysh flipped a 32-foot shot on goal from outside the right faceoff dot in the third period, the last thing anyone expected was for it to find the back of the net. Swayman saw Raddysh\u2019s release. He was square to the shot. But Raddysh\u2019s shot clunked off the right side of Swayman\u2019s chest and under his right armpit.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s goaltending.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny 2-1 game, you\u2019re going to get goals that are magnified,\u201d answered Swayman (20 saves) when asked how Raddysh\u2019s shot went in. \u201cAt the same time, it\u2019s our job to move forward and really take positives. A lot of great things came out of tonight\u2019s game. That\u2019s what we need to focus on.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bruins deserved better. Through two periods, according to Natural Stat Trick, the Bruins held the Lightning to 0.82 expected five-on-five goals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nikita Kucherov, the NHL\u2019s No. 2 scorer, was quiet. Linemates Brayden Point and Jake Guentzel were doing nothing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It got to the point where Tampa coach Jon Cooper broke up his No. 1 line. The Bruins were checking the life out of his team\u2019s firepower.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe played great,\u201d said coach Marco Sturm. \u201cWe played a really, really good hockey game five-on-five. The little details now \u2014 don\u2019t get the puck in, maybe on the power play \u2014 those things are hurting right now unfortunately.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sturm\u2019s point was that situational dips cost the Bruins two points.<\/p>\n
Yes, Swayman should have stopped Raddysh\u2019s shot. But the Tampa defenseman got his opportunity because Casey Mittelstadt did not drive the puck in deep when the score was tied in the third period.<\/p>\n
As Mittelstadt crossed the offensive blue line, J.J. Moser got his stick on the puck. When Mittelstadt tried to recover the puck, Raddysh swooped in and went the other way.\u00a0 A backchecking Mittelstadt took two whacks at Raddysh\u2019s stick to halt his advance. The defenseman pulled away from Mittelstadt to put his winning puck on net.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey did a good job,\u201d Sturm said of his second line. \u201cBut then they were on the ice against. They\u2019ve been on for the last three, four games. They\u2019ve been producing. But on the other side, they\u2019ve got to make sure they do their job of getting the pucks out of our net.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sturm was also speaking about how an 0-for-4 power play didn\u2019t do anything helpful. They recorded only six shots on Andrei Vasilevskiy during eight minutes of man-advantage time. The Bruins had three straight power plays with a chance to extend their lead after Mittelstadt\u2019s second-period goal. Even after Charle-Edouard D\u2019Astous tied the game in the third, the Bruins had a fourth power play 2:18 later.<\/p>\n
Sturm tried to jog it to life by toggling his personnel on the No. 1 unit: Mittelstadt on the right-side half-wall for one power play, Morgan Geekie on his off side on another.<\/p>\n
Nothing worked.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the past, our power play gave us an extra boost,\u201d said Sturm. \u201cThose guys need to step up, too. That second goal, it\u2019s huge. We had those opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sturm made two lineup moves against the Lightning. Lukas Reichel, the No. 3 left wing, was a healthy scratch for the first time as a Bruin. Reichel sat in place of Mikey Eyssimont (three shots, 12:00 of ice time). Reichel had not been as strong on the puck as the Bruins need him to be.<\/p>\n
\u201cStructure-wise, he was never in trouble,\u201d Sturm said. \u201cI just think \u2014 it\u2019s playoff hockey \u2014 he needs to be hard on pucks, getting pucks in, getting pucks out. Just be hard. That\u2019s something he never faced before in his career. If you look at his path with Chicago and Vancouver, he never really played playoff-style hockey. It\u2019s just something he has to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n
On defense, Sturm pulled Henri Jokiharju off the No. 2 pair and replaced him with Jordan Harris. Mason Lohrei (upper body) was unavailable for a fourth straight game. Jokiharju was on the ice for both of the Florida Panthers\u2019 goals in the Bruins\u2019 2-1 loss on Thursday. Harris played an efficient 14:14, earning Sturm\u2019s praise.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were solid throughout most of the game,\u201d said Harris. \u201cI thought our D-zone was pretty good. I thought we could have managed the puck a little better, myself included, in the neutral zone. But we didn\u2019t give them a whole lot. That\u2019s a positive to take away from it. I think they\u2019re the No. 1 team in our division right now, and we\u2019re there the whole game. Easily could have gone the other way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA \u2014 The Boston Bruins allowed the winning goal on Saturday in the most unusual of situations: what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[462],"tags":[95,5,4,465,466],"class_list":{"0":"post-541443","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl-draft","8":"tag-boston-bruins","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-nhl-draft","12":"tag-nhl-entry-draft"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116350063080843674","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}