As the NHL’s break for the 4 Nations Face-Off approaches, the Boston Bruins have defenseman Charlie McAvoy back from injury and hope that consistency can follow.
He is slated to play his second game back after missing seven due to an upper-body injury when the Bruins host the New York Rangers on Saturday afternoon.
McAvoy’s return did not go well, though, as four third-period goals propelled the Winnipeg Jets to a 6-2 victory on Thursday at Boston. It was the Bruins’ second straight loss, and the 14th game this season in which they allowed five or more goals.
“It’s just been like that this year,” McAvoy said of the team’s trend of goals piling up against them. “I feel like if we knew exactly what was wrong, we would have stopped it by now. We’ve just had a way of letting it compound.”
An inability to build momentum from their own goals has not helped the issue.
Just 1:06 after Boston’s Elias Lindholm scored a game-tying goal 11 seconds into the third period, Winnipeg struck twice to take a 4-2 lead and never looked back.
While the Bruins entered Thursday in an Eastern Conference wild-card spot, they will need to clean up things on the defensive end to turn things around. A 5-1-1 run was followed by consecutive losses by a combined 13-4 score.
“It’s not always going to go your way. Momentum shifts during the course of the game are going to happen,” Bruins interim coach Joe Sacco said. “We just have to find a way as a group to really be mentally strong.”
Captain Brad Marchand, who scored Boston’s first goal on Thursday and has points in three straight games, knows his team has no choice but to power through.
“Obviously none of us are happy with the position we’re in, especially considering where we expected to be to start the year,” Marchand said. “But you can’t focus on that. You have to focus on being better for the next one.”
That next one comes against the Rangers, who are in a similar situation while sitting four points behind the Bruins in the playoff picture. New York has consecutive defeats following a 6-0-2 stretch.
Coach Peter Laviolette’s group has been idle from game action since Tuesday when the Rangers were shut out 4-0 by the Carolina Hurricanes.
“Head up, keep the confidence, keep the positivity, and just keep playing the way we have been and we’re going to have a good chance every night,” Rangers center Vincent Trocheck said.
The two recent losses left New York at 8-3-3 in January.
“I think it’s been a little bit of everything, if I’m being honest,” Laviolette said of his team’s improvements during the month. “We’ve scored goals, we’ve defended a little bit better. My eyeball, the numbers, everything to me says we’re playing a better brand that would allow us to be successful.”
As the Rangers look for a positive start to a new month, Massachusetts native Jimmy Vesey is going through a difficult stretch.
A veteran of 609 career NHL games, Vesey has been a healthy scratch for eight straight and recently told the New York Post he feels like he has “no role or purpose on this team.”
In response, Laviolette said, “Jimmy’s an important piece to this team. He’s proven that. Right now, we’ve gone with a lineup, and like all the players that aren’t in there, we just ask them to keep working hard.”
Vesey has just three goals this season and has not played since Jan. 11, with 22-year-old Matt Rempe taking his previous fourth-line spot with Adam Edstrom and Sam Carrick.
–Field Level Media
