A fall at end of trip

Bruins lose lead, then the shootout

January 17, 2010|Fluto Shinzawa, Globe Staff

LOS ANGELES - At the Staples Center yesterday, as the Bruins completed a grinding three-game road trip up and down the California coast (they started in Anaheim, flew north to San Jose, then traveled back to Los Angeles), they found themselves without some of their top guns.

No Patrice Bergeron (thumb). No Marc Savard (knee). No Marco Sturm (leg). No Dennis Wideman (sick). No Steve Begin (undisclosed) for half the game.

What they had, surprisingly, was a two-goal lead in the third period. But just as players have disappeared from their roster because of an outbreak of injuries, the Bruins saw that cushion vanish.

At 10:32 of the third, Dustin Brown made it a 3-2 game. Just over two minutes later, Anze Kopitar tied it. Then in the shootout, Kopitar and Brown beat Tim Thomas - Jonathan Quick turned back David Krejci and Miroslav Satan - to send the Bruins back east nursing a 4-3 loss.

“Our guys left it all out on the ice,’’ said coach Claude Julien, who saw his team record 3 of 6 possible points on the road trip. “It’s unfortunate we weren’t able to come up with a win. But it really took a lot out of us killing those penalties in the second period. It made it hard for us, especially with a short bench and a depleted lineup, to stay there for the whole 60 minutes.’’

The parade of box-bound Bruins started in the second. At 18:50, 19 seconds after the Bruins killed off a holding penalty on Mark Stuart, Trent Whitfield was sent off for interference. Then at 19:38, the Kings went on a two-man advantage when Derek Morris was called for hooking.

The Bruins killed off part of the five-on-three, heading into second intermission with a 3-1 lead, but Stuart was whistled for cross-checking at 1:00 of the third period, putting his team down two men again.

The Bruins killed all five LA power-play opportunities, but the energy they spent doing it cost them later in the third.

Behind the net, Alexander Frolov engaged Johnny Boychuk in a puck battle. Matt Hunwick slid behind the net as well, offering support for his partner. But Frolov scooped the puck out front to Brown. With Hunwick not in the slot, an uncovered Brown - no backcheckers in sight - tapped the puck past Thomas (31 saves) at 10:32.

The Bruins, who make net-front coverage one of their highest priorities, stumbled in front of Thomas again later in the third. After the Kings won a race for the puck in the offensive zone, Wayne Simmonds had a two-on-one with Kopitar against Boychuk. The Bruins didn’t have the matchup they wanted against Kopitar (Boychuk and Hunwick, along with Vladimir Sobotka centering Milan Lucic and Byron Bitz), and the Kings made them pay. Kopitar took Simmonds’s feed and beat Thomas at 12:54 to rub out Boston’s two-goal edge.