Bruins
“That’s not fair to our goalies who have been so great for us. We left them out to dry the last couple.”
NEW YORK — Jim Montgomery was far from thrilled in the hours leading up to Saturday’s matinee matchup at Madison Square Garden.
Less than 24 hours earlier, a tryptophan-laden Bruins squad snoozed their way to a lopsided 5-2 loss to the Red Wings on home ice.
“Yesterday was, maybe outside of the playoffs last year in the first round, was the first game where I thought we lost the game,” Montgomery said Saturday morning. “Because of our habits and details. … We never found our game yesterday.”
His frustrations didn’t subside in the first period against the Rangers — when a two-goal deficit and an 8-0 edge in shots on goal for New York prompted Boston’s bench boss to call an impromptu timeout and lay into his roster.
And after the final whistle mercifully sounded on a 7-4 defeat in Manhattan — Boston’s second-straight regulation loss — Montgomery echoed a similar script to the one that doomed his team against Detroit.
“I think it’s a continuum because we played similarly,” Montgomery said of similar mistakes playing out in these back-to-back losses. “Not willing to forecheck, not willing to work for offense, and then the breakdowns defensively.
“We’re not giving our goaltenders an opportunity, like we were before of stopping the strong side shot … There’s a lot of things that unfortunately, our habits and details have kind of eroded on us defensively here in the last two games.”
Saturday marked the first time that Boston has dropped consecutive games in regulation since March 12 – 14, 2023 — a rare blip on an otherwise record-setting run.
And even though this recent slide still has Boston sitting at the top of the Atlantic Division with a 14-3-3 record, it’s tough to shrug aside a few concerning trends that have marred Montgomery’s team over the last few games.
A regression in net
There’s no need to delve too deep into this one.
The Bruins’ scorching start to the 2023-24 season was a direct result of some elite goaltending from Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman — with the duo’s stellar play between the pipes routinely bailing out a team marred with leaky D-zone coverage and inconsistent offensive production.
Those D-zone lapses have carried over into this recent skid. But what hasn’t followed is the unsustainable goaltending that has been masking those misgivings.
Saturday marked the third time in the last four games that the Bruins have relinquished at least five goals.
Those first two losses fell on the shoulders of Swayman, who relinquished nine goals on 74 shots against the Lightning and Red Wings.
On Saturday, it was Ullmark (seven goals allowed on 40 shots) who was rendered mortal for the first time in a long time.
The reigning Vezina Trophy winner wasn’t aided by the rigid D-zone structure in front of him (more on that in a moment), but loose pucks and rebounds also directly led to a pair of tallies from Chris Kreider and Jimmy Vesey, while K’Andre Miller beat Ullmark clean with a shot 38 feet out in the closing minute of the second period.
Prolonged slumps for both Ullmark and Swayman have been a rare occurrence for the Bruins over the last two years.
And while the odds favor one (if not both) of Boston’s goalies bouncing back in short order, the margin of error is so slim for this team at times that it can rarely afford even pedestrian outings from its 1-2 punch in net.
Soft defensive fortitude
We’ve taken in enough of a sample size to not hit the panic button on both Ullmark and Swayman, given their knack for keeping Boston in most contests this year.
What we’re still waiting to see this year — at least over an extended stretch — is Boston’s defense making things easier for their two goalies.
Given the personnel in place on Boston’s blue line and the team’s identity as a stingy club whose success is rooted in defensive fortitude, it was to be expected that the Bruins were not going to cough up much in their own end all season long.
But on Saturday, the Bruins relinquished a whopping 22 high-danger scoring chances against the Rangers.

But even if Saturday was arguably the low point for Boston’s defensive identity through the first 20 games of the 2023-24 campaign, it’s also not exactly an outlier.
So far this season, the Bruins are 17th in the NHL in 5v5 high-danger scoring chances allowed per 60 minutes at 11.29.
On most nights, those quality chances and odd-man rushes have been turned aside by both Ullmark and Swayman. But when both netminders aren’t paying at an elite level, disaster usually strikes.
“That’s unacceptable,” Charlie Coyle said postgame. “That team played a back-to-back. And we looked like we did way more than they did. And that’s not fair to our goalies who have been so great for us. We left them out to dry the last couple.”
Rush defense has been a source of criticism for Montgomery all season long, with Boston failing to account for trailing skaters (such as Miller on his second-period strike).
But Saturday also saw Boston doomed by lackluster netfront coverage and other quality chances that even a stout goalie like Ullmark couldn’t turn aside.
The goaltending as of late has fallen below some lofty expectations. But the play in front of Ullmark/Swayman has been sub-standard for most of the year.
Keeping things simple (or lack thereof)
Of course, some of Boston’s defensive woes are a direct correlation with the Bruins’ propensity to turn the puck over and make things difficult on themselves down the other end of the ice.
A feed from Derek Forbort in the D-zone that rookie Johnny Beecher fumbled directly led to an opening salvo from Nick Bonino just seconds later on Saturday.
But for both Montgomery and Coyle, a regular conduit playing into some D-zone miscues has been a lack of sustained puck pressure in the offensive zone.
“We got to play north and play simple and get to our identity — which is a pretty good forechecking team and a team that can hang on to pucks,” Montgomery noted. “We weren’t very patient with the puck in the offensive zone, which led to them coming at our defensemen with a lot of speed.”
With Boston struggling to adhere to a grinding mindset on offense, far too errant passes are being plucked and set on counter-rushes against Ullmark and Swayman as of late.
As talented as Boston’s big guns on offense like David Pastrnak are, the Bruins are at their best offensively when their skill delivers a coup de grâce after a grinding shift down low.
“It’s just, we stopped doing too much with it,” Coyle said of the few instances when Boston generated momentum offensively against New York. “I think a lot of times we get into trouble, we’re trying to throw the puck East-West, cross-ice passes, you’re getting picked off. When we go north with it? Everyone knows where it’s going.
“We can support each other. Get it down there. We forecheck, we’re tight down there, we support and we come out with the puck and we make our plays. Our skill takes over after our work and that’s got to be first and foremost. Our work and compete are going to be first and our skill will kind of pick up and we have enough of that in here. But it’s about our will and compete to get to that point.”
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