Boston’s maddening inconsistency was on display once again Monday.
Fresh off a 6-3 win against the Flyers on Saturday, spirits were high. The B’s felt like their offense was finally starting to connect, and there was hope the club could string together victories for the first time this calendar year.
Then the opening 40 minutes of today’s game transpired.
After a nondescript first period, Boston came out flat in the second and were smacked by an Islanders team down the services of Andrew Ladd and Cal Clutterbuck. By the time the middle frame ended, Tuukka Rask had been beaten three times in just over five minutes -- two of those goals courtesy Nikolai Kulemin -- and was hooked at the intermission, with Zane McIntyre coming out to start the third.
The B’s did out-shoot the Isles 24-15 through two periods, but that hardly impressed the TD Garden faithful:
Boos greeting the Bruins as they exit the ice for the second intermission trailing the lowly Islanders by a 3-0 score
— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) January 16, 2017
If the Bruins can’t turn things around in the third, they’ll head into a tough stretch on a rather sour note. Four of Boston’s next seven games are on the road -- in Detroit, Tampa, Pittsburgh and Washington -- and their home dates include tough matchups against the Blackhawks and Penguins.
Update: Well, that was ugly. Jason Chimera added a shorthanded marker in the third to make the final score Isles 4, Bruins 0.
“Whether it was fatigue or not, I don’t know,” head coach Claude Julien said postgame, per CSNNE. “But we were flat today. It’s very disappointing.”