EDMONTON – The good news is that the Bruins had the right kind of urgency in their 3-2 shootout loss to the Edmonton Oilers at Rexall Place on Wednesday night.
The bad news is that it didn’t arrive until the final five minutes of the third period when Zdeno Chara tied it up and ensured that the Bruins could still get five out of six points on their swing through Western Canada.
Granted Oilers goalie Anders Nilsson looked great in stopping 38 shots and the refs didn’t exactly have a banner night with a number of soft penalty calls against both sides, but the Bruins clearly didn’t bring the kind of energy and urgency that was needed for two points.
Tuukka Rask called it “a wide open” style of play for most of the second and third periods that doesn’t really ever serve the Bruins well and his captain agreed when it came to breaking down the shootout loss. The Bruins held the Oilers to just eight shots in the first period and kept things to the outside, but cracked for 28 shots allowed in the final 40 minutes of regulation with plenty of good Edmonton scoring chances mixed in.
Rask was good, particularly in stopping both Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle on a breakaway after a breakdown at the offensive blue line by Zach Trotman, but the Bruins need to do more than simply let their goaltender bail them out.
“We didn’t have our best game. We need to better, and work much harder. It just wasn’t good enough,” said Chara. “We got a point out of it, but I think we have to realize that if we keep playing like this then it’s just a matter of time before we burn ourselves.
“We pushed really hard toward the end to get a point out of it, and we killed some big penalties at a crucial time of the game. Tuukka was making big saves for us, but we can’t always be relying on Tuukka, or certain people. We need to get it done as a team. We have to take advantage of those days off for when the schedule gets busier and heavier. Usually we have a good jump and good start to the games, but we didn’t have that tonight.”
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There were also a good deal of rebounds left by Nilsson around the Edmonton net and turnovers by the Oilers defense, which gave the Bruins plenty of good scoring chances if they were willing to battle for them. That didn’t happen enough as evidenced by just the single goal in the first 56 minutes of the game before Chara tied things up in the closing four minutes of the game.
“We decided to trade chances [against Edmonton]. Our guys were gambling a little bit, and because of that we were away from our game,” said Claude Julien. “We had to be a little bit grittier [around the net]. There were a lot of loose pucks and battles being won, and we didn’t win enough.”
The Bruins will get back to basics with a practice day in Calgary on Thursday, but it will be another game with a fast, skilled Calgary Flames team on Friday night that will once again try to entice the B’s into trading chances with them as well.