Joe Sacco and the Bruins were saying all the right things entering Saturday’s home bout against the Vegas Golden Knights.
With Saturday’s matchup against Bruce Cassidy standing as the last game before the team’s two-week break, a victory over a Cup contender like Vegas would have represented some semblance of momentum in a season where that has come in short supply.
“[We’re] going into the last four games and treating it like playoff hockey,” Sacco said Friday morning. “So far, we’re 2-1 out of that four right now. We have one more game to finish it off, and it’s a massive opportunity for us.
“I really feel like that. I feel if we can play a good sound hockey game tomorrow against one of the better teams in the league the last couple of years, it sets us up and puts us in a good spot going into the break.”
On Saturday afternoon, the decibel level of TD Garden rose to playoff-caliber thresholds — a proper reflection of the stakes and urgency currently facing an underachieving Bruins roster.
Granted, that roar of approval from the Garden crowd came after a successful video challenger for goaltender interference — rather than a momentum-shifting power-play tally or a bone-crunching hit.
But after Pavel Dorofeyev’s go-ahead tally with 1:41 left in regulation was wiped off the board after Boston challenged the ruling, a desperate Bruins team received new life.
And with momentum back on their side and their fans cheering them on, it only took the Bruins 31 seconds to find a new way to fall flat on their collective face.
The goaltender interference call against Dorofeyev might have kept the score knotted at 3-3. But the Bruins still had to kill off the closing seconds of an ill-timed slashing penalty from Pavel Zacha — an exercise that proved fruitless when an uncovered Tomas Hertl beat Jeremy Swayman with 1:10 to go.
Hertl’s power-play goal just after the video review stood as yet another back-breaker in what resulted in a morale-sapping 4-3 loss for Boston.
“Disappointed to not get a win today,” Nikita Zadorov said of Boston’s latest setback.
The Bruins have had no shortage of disheartening defeats this season — be it blowout losses to the likes of Winnipeg, Buffalo, Carolina, Edmonton, and many others.
Coughing up a two-goal cushion in the closing minutes of a game against the Senators on Jan. 18 might have held the previous top spot for the worst loss of the season (among many contenders). Granted, Boston at least managed to secure a point in that shootout defeat.
But with points at a premium already, the Bruins are now unraveling in a new area — letting third-period advantages slip through their grasp in regulation defeats.
Entering Wednesday’s road matchup against the Rangers, the Bruins boasted a record of 16-0-4 when entering the third period with a lead.
In their last two games against New York and Vegas, the Bruins entered the final 20 minutes with a lead. And in both games, they have zero points to show for it.
Their record now sits at 16-2-4 — with those two setbacks coming at the worst possible time for a team that’s starting to slip down the standings.
“It’s do or die for us,” Zadorov said. “We wasted the last two games, four points. It could cost us. Or could not. We’ll see.”
The optics continue to worsen for the Bruins, who were once again done in on Saturday by special-teams woes (0-for-1 on the power play, 2-for-4 on the PK) and miscues at critical times during games.
Be it those shorthanded breakdowns or Jeremy Swayman letting a long-range shot from Zach Whitecloud trickle past him with 33.3 seconds left in the second, the Bruins seemingly can’t get out of their own way to stop this season-long malaise.
Had the Bruins managed to clamp down on their third-period leads as they’ve done all season long, Boston could have entered this extended break riding the wave of a four-game win streak — marking just the second time all year that Boston has won three-plus games in a row.
But at this point, focusing on the “what ifs” in a season where the Bruins continue to unearth new ways to disappoint feels like a lost cause.
Much like Friday morning, the Bruins said all the right things on Saturday evening.
“I mean, I think we can play with anybody,” Brad Marchand said. “The difference in the game is very small margins, small details, so we just have to clean it up a little.
“But I think that we can play with anybody. And we’ve seen a lot of — pretty much everyone at this point — and I don’t think there’s anybody that we can’t play with.”
But those words of optimism sure aren’t resonating with Saturday’s deflated Causeway crowd — whose third-period roar is looking like the closest this stadium comes to replicating a playoff atmosphere in 2025.
