And I've gotten to see it live in person this time. I went to the Kings game on 3/19 here in Boston. I had great seats. Front row balcony just slightly to the right of center ice, right behind the Bruins bench. I was with a good group of guys (my cousins Bob, John and Al (who are all brothers)), and we were all set to see the Bs take down a bad Kings team.
I was really looking forward to this game because I was supposed to go to the game on January 16th with these same guys but I couldn't make it. I wanted to, I just physically couldn't make it. So there I was at home wishing I was at the game, watching it on tv, and it was an awesome game. Two goals and a fight in the first 10 minutes. I was dying.
So now I had a second chance at seeing what has been a great Bruins team overall this season, and I was pretty excited for it.
The Bs got out to a two goal lead by the end of two periods, but they weren't controlling the game. For example, at one point in the first period they were getting outshot 8 - 1 (they ended up outshooting the kings 10 - 9 in that period). It wasn't pretty. They got a penalty really early in the first and never seemed to get in synch afterwards.
The Bruins had a lot of trouble getting the puck out of their own zone all night. They would get the puck from the Kings. They would start to control the puck, and then whenever they started to break out something would go wrong. The pass would be off, the pass would be too soft, the puck would take a weird hop, whatever. It just wasn't working for them.
Offensively they looked Ok. Matt Hunwick got them started with a nice goal in the first period. He was setup very nicely with a pass from Michael Ryder. The pass was threaded from just to the right of the night, out in front and between a couple of defenders. From what I could tell on the Jumbo tron Hunwick made a good play just seeing the puck in the crowd never mind putting it in the top corner.
Then Mark Recchi scored on a really nice tip pass from Patrice Bergeron. Bergeron got a pass from Kobesew, who was behind the net. Bergeron just redirected the pass across the front of the net to Recchi, who had a wide open net.
Wheeler had one shift in the second period where he basically skated through everybody on the Kings team, got a shot off, broke up the subsequent Kings breakout pass, and then skated through the Kings team a second time. He again got a shot and again got stuffed. It was a great effort on his part. The only problem is he seemed to disappear the rest of the night.
The Kings really picked it up in the third period. They managed to get a goal back, and then tie it up with a little more than a minute and a half left in the game. That completely took the energy out of the crowd. The scary thing is my cousins and I could all see the tying goal coming at about five minutes left in the period.
So it went to overtime, the Bs looked ok in overtime, they got a few chances. But I think everyone in the building saw the goal coming that the Kings got to win it.
I don't know what's going on. I think the Bs are starting to doubt themselves. Early in the season they were just having fun and winning a lot. then I think they got some swagger and attitude that carried them even further. Now, I think they're starting to wonder if they're as good as they thought they were. Hockey has a tremendous mental aspect to it. The more confidence you play with the better you are. The same player with the same skills is just more dominating if they have some swagger and confidence to them. The Bs need to either get that confidence back, or play with a "lets just have fun attitude". The lets have fun attitued can lead to getting swagger back, but it can be risky if they continue to lose. One thing is for sure, they can't play it in the middle it won't work.