BOSTON — The Bruins have picked a bad time to play their worst stretch of hockey of the season. And the injury bug is proving to have a voracious appetite.
The B’s watched a two-goal lead quickly evaporate in an awful second period, their power-play (0-5 on Thursday, 0-for-23 in their last six) and they lost 3-2 to the also-ran Ottawa Senators at the Garden. It is the first time all season the B’s have lost three consecutive games and they’ve now lost four of their last five.
If that wasn’t concerning enough, Linus Ullmark, who had been trending towards being the B’s goalie in Game One of the playoffs, left the game after the first period for reasons that were not immediately disclosed.
The only good news is that the playoffs are still a couple weeks away. But the B’s have a lot of work to do to get right.
The Bruins didn’t play what you would call a clean first period as they had some issues breaking the puck out and their power-play continued to falter. But they managed to come away with a 2-0 lead while outshooting the Sens, 16-8.
The lead was courtesy of a couple of undrafted players.
Marc McLaughlin continues to make it hard to take him out of the lineup. Signed as a free agent out of Boston College, the Billerica native was expected to get a quick look-see before heading down to Providence to begin his climb back toward the NHL. But he’s making a case for sticking around. At 6:36, he scored his third goal in as many Garden games. Nick Foligno, who is playing his best hockey of the season heading down the stretch, made a nice move behind the net and came out on the left side. Foligno fired a sharp pass into the low slow and McLaughlin had his stick on the ice to pop it past goalie Anton Forsberg.
The B’s had two power-plays in the first but their streak of futility extended to an 0-for-20 stretch.
But the B’s were able to reverse one of their negative trends when, after a string of last minute goals against, they scored one of their own with 59 seconds left when Jesper Froden, called up from Providence on Wednesday, scored his first NHL goal. Taylor Hall made a nice diagonal pass to Matt Grzelcyk at the left point. Froden, the 27-year-old Swede signed last summer, was able to make a nice tip of the Grzelcyk shot/pass that beat Forsberg for the 2-0 lead.
But all was not well. Ullmark was shaken up early in the first period – he took a shot off the mask and made a couple of other acrobatic saves – and went to the bench to get checked out at one point, but finished the period, playing quite well. Ullmark, however, did not return for the second and Jeremy Swayman was thrust into action.
It took the Senators all of 47 seconds to draw within a goal. Swayman first made a save on a sharp angle shot from Tim Stutzle. But Brady Tkachuk pounced on the rebound behind the goal line and banked it in off Swayman.
Then disaster struck.
The Sens evened it up, then took the lead on a lengthy 5-on-3. First Mike Reilly took a high-sticking penalty and, seven seconds later, Patrice Bergeron was whistled for hooking, a call that incensed the captain.
Unlike the B’s, the Sens did not squander their opportunities. On the two-man advantage, Josh Norris scored on a one-timer from the right circle. Then on the 5-on-4, the B’s fumbled a chance to get the puck out and Stutzle pounced on a loose puck in the slot and buried it for the 3-2 Ottawa lead.
The B’s got a third power-play later in the second, but again, they had little little in the way of pucks on net. In fact, they couldn’t get much of anything going in the second, when they were outshot 15-8.
Swayman made a handful of tremendous saves in the third to keep the B’s alive but they could not get the equalizer.
