BOSTON — Since the start of this postseason, the Bruins had gotten elite play from their penalty-killing unit.
In their first-round defeat of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Bruins allowed just one power play goal over seven games. In the first two games of their current series with the Florida Panthers, the Bruins had yielded just one goal while a man short.
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In all, the Bruins had successfully killed off 28-of-30 man advantage situations in nine games.
Then, in Game 3, that all went out the window. In the span of exactly one minute in the second period, the Bruins gave up two power play goals to the Panthers. In the third period, the Panthers tallied two more.
In two periods, then, the Bruins had allowed twice as many power play goals as they had in the previous nine playoff games combined.
Is it any surprise that they also lost the game, 6-2, to fall behind two games to one in the series?
“I think they made adjustments,” ventured Bruins forward Jake DeBrusk. “Obviously, they have lots of really good players and I think their power play has been doing really well all year. But I still have confidence in our penalty kill. Obviously, I’ve got to do a better job. I was out there for one of them. It’s just simple plays – execution of clears, trying to make zone entries hard.”
The first two power play goals by Florida came in the final five minutes of the middle period. Bruins defenseman Mason Lohrei was whistled off for a double minor for high sticking in a corner scramble, and the Panthers went right to work, scoring two goals in 60 seconds.
“They did a good job creating more zone time,” recounted defenseman Brandon Carlo. “We didn’t get our clears at times when we needed to. That net-front battle, we’ve got to win that battle of the ice. They did a good job funneling a lot of pucks there, getting a lot of traffic. We need to get under sticks and move bodies out of that zone and just allow (Jeremy Swayman) to see the puck a little bit more. We’re very confident in him making those saves.”
It didn’t help that one of the two power play goals in the final period came after the Bruins were assessed a highly questionable penalty. Jakub Lauko barreled toward the goal before being checked by defenseman Aaron Ekblad into goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky.
Incredibly, Lauko was assessed two minutes for goaltender interference as the TD Garden crowd protested by showering the ice with plastic water bottles and promotional towels.
“Obviously, we’ve got to stay out of the box,” concluded DeBrusk. “No matter what we think of the refs or what’s going on. We’ve got to kill it. You can be frustrated at the call or mad about anything on the ice. But you still have to do you job and try to keep the game tight at that point. When you give enough opportunities, the top players, no matter what team they’re on, they’re all very good. They’ve played together now for a couple of years. They’re going to get more looks, they’re going to get more touches and that’s something that we need to avoid.
“We still have to do the job and kill the penalty.”
