On a night when they lost another key defenseman to injury, the Bruins tied the game in the third period and had chances to win in overtime, but fell to the Colorado Avalanche, 4-3, Saturday in Denver.
Points are hard to come by for the road team at Ball Arena, where the Avalanche came in 17-5-0 so getting something has value, But the Bruins had a power play for the last 1:58 of overtime and couldn’t convert forcing the shootout.
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After none of the first five shooters were successful, Valeri Nichushkin’s wrist shot beat Jeremy Swayman’s glove to give the Avalanche the win.
Brad Marchand scored the Bruins first and last goals of the game, while Johnny Beecher, who has been in and out of the lineup, had his fifth of the season.
Jeremy Swayman made 33 saves for Boston (24-8-7), who travels to Arizona to face the Coyotes, on Tuesday.
Here are 3 takeaways from Bruins’ shootout loss:
Bruins are getting thin on defense — Brandon Carlo, who is in the midst of his best season, left Monday’s game with injury in the second period. The Bruins later announced it was an upper-body injury and that Carlo wouldn’t return. It wasn’t immediately clear when Carlo suffered the injury.
The Bruins are already missing Derek Forbort. If Carlo joins him on the shelf, Boston will be missing two of their best penalty-killers and defensive-minded blueliners. Rookie Mason Lohrei also missed his second straight game after being hit in the mouth with a puck.
Carlo had played 1:50 before the injury and had an assist. He has two goals and seven assists and averaged 20:29 on the ice. The other five blue-liners saw their minutes increase. Recent Providence call-up Parker Wotherspoon played 20:48 and blocked four shots.
Marchand climbing Bruins career scoring list – Brad Marchand leap-frogged a Bruins icon and came within a point of another milestone. Marchand’s goal to open the game gave him 898 career points tying him with Rick Middleton at No. 5 on the franchise’s career points list. His second goal put him in the top five by himself and moved him one point from 900 in his career. Marchand will have plenty of work to do to get to No. 4 where Phil Esposito sits with 1,012 points.
The game featured an incredibly rare penalty occurrence — With 12:48 left in the second period, the officials called matching penalties creating a 4-on-4. That of course isn’t unusual, but the infractions that earned the whistle were.
Both teams were called for simultaneous too-many-men-on-ice penalties so a whistle turned a 6-on-6 into 4-on-4.
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