Things are going to get harder for Marco Sturm and the Boston Bruins before they get any easier.
When the Bruins went into the break with four straight losses (0-3-1) to their name, the first-year Bruins head coach cited some “mental fatigue” as an emerging issue for the club. Some players in the Boston locker room — David Pastrnak, most notably — agreed with that assessment and thought a few days away and a road trip might just be the perfect thing for the Black and Gold.
But the holiday break alone was not enough to snap the Bruins out of their funk Saturday night, as the Bruins’ winless streak hit five by way of a 4-1 loss to the Sabres at Buffalo’s KeyBank Center. Pastrnak scored the only Boston goal in the losing effort.
And for the Bruins, this was really a game lost in the second period. Up 1-0 through 20 minutes, the Bruins were simply overwhelmed by the Sabres in the middle frame, and it was Buffalo who struck for three goals in a span of 7:15. Buffalo’s second-period tallies came from Ryan McLeod, Peyton Krebs, and then Mattias Samuelsson. The Sabres downright dominated that period, too, at one point holding an 11-0 edge in shots and ultimately finishing the period with a 13-2 shot advantage in addition to the 3-0 scoring edge.
In a night short on positives from a Bruins point of view, the only thing you could even take some comfort in was the performance of Joonas Korpisalo.
At the risk of sounding hyperbolic here, Korpisalo might be playing for his job and playing to avoid the waiver wire these days.
When the Bruins decided to ride Jeremy Swayman too hard last week, Sturm did so saying that Swayman gave the team the “best chance to win.” That was against the 30th-ranked team in the NHL, mind you, which speaks to a potential lack of trust in Korpisalo. And with Korpisalo yanked from what was his first start in over a week last time he got the call, you just had to wonder how many poor outings the Bruins could handle from No. 70.
And while Saturday was not the win or truly dynamite performance that the club may have hoped for out of Korpisalo, it was also a definite step in the right direction, as Korpisalo stopped 30 of 33 shots faced in the losing effort. The .909 save percentage in this one also marked the first time this season that Korpisalo had posted a single-game save percentage over .900 in a defeat.
This also felt like a game where Korpisalo showed up and was perhaps the only reason why the Sabres weren’t able to run away with things in the aforementioned second period domination from the Sabres. Korpisalo did do enough to in theory give the Bruins a chance in the third period, as they were only down by just two, and never trailed by more than two prior to Buffalo’s empty-net dagger.
The Bruins will get back in action Monday night against the Flames out in Calgary.
