The unthinkable was made official on Saturday as the Boston Bruins were eliminated from the 2015 Stanley Cup playoffs.
Perhaps the best phrasing would be “the Bruins failed to make the playoffs,” as that word seemed to come up pretty often as key members of the team reacted to their postseason run ending.
“Everybody’s pretty down right now,” Head coach Claude Julien said. “When you don’t make the playoffs, as you know, you’ve failed.”
Brad Marchand echoed such a thought, deeming the 2014-15 campaign “a failure of a season,” according to WEEI’s DJ Bean.
Then again, maybe Marchand and Julien jumped to the “acceptance” phase of grieving while others haven’t quite made it there yet. More than a few Bruins seem stuck in “confusion.”
Zdeno Chara said it’s “tough to find words” to explain the letdown while Patrice Bergeron seemed in the middle: knowing that they failed, but not completely comprehending the turn of events.
Bergy: "When you don't make the playoffs, it's definitely not even close to your expectations, so, yeah, we definitely underachieved."
— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) April 12, 2015
Bergy: "Never thought that we would be in this situation, and it's definitely - it's hard to get my head around it right now"
— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) April 12, 2015
Unfortunately for the Bruins, they have a longer-than-usual offseason to contemplate what went wrong ... and then maybe address what needs to change.
Tuukka Rask, meanwhile, honestly got a little dark:
Rask: "We had so many chances to get better & fix our game...we didn't. At end of the day you get what you deserve. This is what we deserve"
— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) April 12, 2015
Tough times.