BOSTON — Everyone inside the old barn Saturday night wanted to see forever buddies Jeremy Swayman and Linus Ullmark share an embrace. They got what they desired when the current Bruins netminder and former-Bruin-now-Senators goalkeeper, respectively, enjoyed a friendly moment together during pregame warmups and posed arm-in-arm for photos.
Then the contest began … and Boston forgot how to shoot the puck on net in the third period. They put a grand total of zero shots on Ullmark in the final stanza of a tie game.
A bagel. A goose egg. Zilch.
For the first time since December 21, 2006 when they blanked Vancouver, 2-0, before a less-than-capacity TD Garden crowd (yes, there was a time that used to happen), Boston was held shotless in the third period.
Trust me when I say no one is going to confuse the Ottawa defense with the 1977 Montreal Canadiens. That only made it more confounding.
So while Elias Lindholm ended a dubious streak of 24 minutes dating back to the end of the middle period with a great bid in the opening seconds of overtime, it was too late. Ullmark turned aside with a right pad stop, and the Bruins ultimately lost, 3-2, when Brady Tkachuk took it back the other way and beat Swayman with a blocker side snipe 21 seconds in.
Tkachuk finished the evening with 12 shots on goal himself. The Bruins, as a team, had 16.
Now close to 20 percent through this so-far frustrating 2024-25 campaign, Boston’s rollercoaster ride had been on an upward path after winning three of their previous four. But it took a careening downward turn Saturday night, leaving embattled head coach Jim Montgomery beyond frustrated and without answers.
In a clipped one-and-a-half minute postgame press conference, he was asked if the message he’s delivering inside the Boston locker room isn’t quite getting through.
“That’s up (for) you guys to figure out and come up with a reason,” Montgomery said to the assembled media. “We just weren’t good enough. You guys can write what you guys think is the malaise on this team and what’s going on. We’re just not playing good enough.”
No doubt borne from frustration at watching his skilled-yet-still-misfiring team’s failure to execute offensively, Montgomery wore the look of a man who knows he’s on thin ice professionally. With two assistants in Joe Sacco and Jay Leach with prior head coaching experience, it stands to reason if Montgomery’s feeling hot under the collar these days.
Never forget: in pro sports, if the coach’s message isn’t penetrating the psyche of his charges, well, it’s not as if management is going to fire all the players and start anew.
The Bruins did, however, take ownership of the situation.
“It kind of felt like we were defending even though it was 2-2,” Pavel Zacha, one of the few bright spots after scoring for the second time in as many games, said of the third period.
“We weren’t hungry enough to get that game-winning goal,” linemate David Pastrnak added.
Captain Brad Marchand spoke at length on the subject. When a team starts to lack confidence or is overthinking on the ice, he said, the execution suffers.
“We need to get out of our heads, stop thinking and start playing,” he said.
“You’ve got to find ways; that’s our job. We have to find ways to bring different emotion to the game and play with different emotion at times. Whether you have to fake it ’til you make it or find different ways internally, externally, whatever it is … our team is supposed to be a big, strong, aggressive team, and we haven’t been showing that.”
Boston has games in St. Louis and Dallas this coming week before returning to TD Garden next Saturday, where they’ll play four of their next five. How they handle the time away to clear their heads and reset their approach could ultimately determine the fate of their coach — and their season.
“You can’t take away (that) we’ve been doing some good things lately,” Marchand said. “A bad period, bad period-and-a-half, whatever it is, you can’t dwell on that. You’ve got to take that, learn from it, understand we need to be better in a few areas, but the world’s not ending.
“We need to continue to be better.”