The record will show that last night, at 1:52 of overtime, Dustin Jeffrey halted the Bruins’ seven-game winning streak. After picking off a Dennis Seidenberg pass, Jeffrey beat Tim Thomas to give the Penguins a 3-2 win before 17,565 at TD Garden.
“I made a beautiful pass,’’ cracked Seidenberg. “It was right on his tape. It caught the guy with speed and I was at the end of my shift.’’
In reality, the Bruins lost the game well before it went to extra time.
After taking a 1-0 lead in the second — Zdeno Chara took a backhand flip from David Krejci, walked into the slot, and picked the top corner with a well-placed wrister at 7:26 — the Bruins disappeared. On just about every shift following Chara’s goal, the Penguins took it to their opponents.
They were hungrier for pucks in the Boston zone. Their ferocious, heavy forecheck pinned the Bruins and forced them into pressure-relieving flips, rims, and chips. In turn, Pittsburgh regained control of the puck and sent their forwards flowing into the Boston end once more.
They shredded the ice in the Boston zone to snowflakes. Appropriately, the Penguins were rewarded with two second-period goals, giving them a 2-1 lead.
“I think it was mostly us,’’ said coach Claude Julien. “We weren’t moving our feet at all. We were second to the puck, if anything. At the same time, you couldn’t even establish a physical game because you couldn’t get there in time. They were on the puck and we were doing a lot of watching in that second period. They just took the game away from us at that point.’’
What made the second so disappointing for the Bruins was that Pittsburgh, minus Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Chris Kunitz, played with better legs. The Bruins were off Friday. The Penguins were coming off a 2-1 overtime loss at New Jersey and arrived in Boston early yesterday morning.
That a tired Pittsburgh club could impose its will so thoroughly underscores an issue that remains for the Bruins: The challenge of retrieving pucks, initiat ing breakouts, and turning defense into offense.
“We couldn’t make flat passes,’’ said Chara. “We were either a little bit ahead or a little bit behind the right spots and positions. Pittsburgh did a good job putting a lot of pressure on us and not giving us much time and space out there. They play really well.’’
