I had to read some of the later pages in the thread to help process what happened last night:
Up 3-1 with 2 home games and they choke. I’m sorry for the diehards here. Just an epic, yet, predictable collapse. For shame.
I love playoff hockey. I LOVE it. I love it when the Bruins are prominently involved. But my life no longer has the time/space to watch the regular season. As shitty as I feel today, I feel for the fans that went on the amazing ride that was the regular season only to get bucked off like that. Looking forward to what our regulars have to say.
I can’t believe that’s the last time we’re going to see Bergy and Krejci.
I'm not ready, but I doubt I ever will be.
Oh and can we please bury the "protect the civic" line? In the playoffs, this team doesn't protect the civic very often in big games anymore.
Abso-fucking-lutely NOT. That cup run is one of the most fond sports memories of my life. I can rattle off the names of posters from that era and this place was a big part of my experience. I was actually thinking yesterday about how odd it is that "protect the civic" is such a recongizable rallying cry in here (where I do most of my Bruins banter) but outside of SoSH people would have no fucking clue what I'm talking about.
They looked like they had tired legs to me, though that is also their fault because endurance matters.
Still doesn't make much sense to me, as depth was such a key part of their success. 4 lines deep with 6 solid D men, and 2 goalies to boot.
Yikes, awful quotes.
I can’t put this on coaching. The theme of the 4 losses were inexplicably poor puck possession by our defensemen in our own end that led to so many goals for Florida. The amount of turnovers killed this team.
I’m sick to my stomach. This was as much fun watching the Bruins as I’ve ever had. My 2 year old son got into hockey this year. I did not want this to end. I feel worse than I did for the 18-1 pats game and the ‘19 SCF. I’ll be even sicker if this is indeed Bergeron’s last game. I honestly don’t know how to get over this. It’s going to be a long time.
I wanna hear more from our experts, but I kinda agree. It's not Monty's fault our players couldn't complete simple passes in G6 and G7 (possibly even going further back in the series). OTOH, perhaps Monty did shuffle lines ineffectively or deployed tactics that the team couldn't execute. Again, I'll leave that to the experts.
There’s a whole lot of stupid in here
You'll hafta be more specific. But that discussion is likely better in RMPS than here.
Bertuzzi was one of the few players on the team who actually looked fit for the moment throughout the series.
But the whole team was collectively such shit defensively in the last three games especially that everyone deserves a huge slice of blame.
Really sucks that it doesn’t even feel like they left everything out on the ice. Florida was willing to die for the win. Bruins weren’t. I don’t mean this in like a hypothetical “wanted it more” kind of way just literally that one team visibly worked a lot harder. Bruins thought they could regular season their way through it.
Agreed re Tuz. I saw the stat someone else posted about a poor +/- but the dude had a pulse and led the team in goals and points. Similarly I said I didn't see enough of Hall down the stretch of the game, and someone replied that he had been invisible. He was tied for the lead in goals (5) with Tuz, and was 2nd in points.
That explains a lot. The guy is my favorite hockey player of all time by a mile. But he was really bad in the games he played IMO.
I just don’t get how guys like McAvoy and Lindholm couldn’t even do like D to D passes without shitting themselves. Make it make sense.
Agreed
They choked. Pretty simple.
Maybe
I understand but this team has a bleak future regardless, and I absolutely do not trust the Neely/Sweeney team to navigate the next few years.
And Monty… Jesus when you make Grady Little look competent….
Total house clean. Start over and build properly.
I am not being obtuse. And I get people handle this differently. But, what the fuck do we need to “rebuild” exactly? You’re being a bit nuts with your reactions — I get why — but this team is in great shape going forward with this core.
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I was unimpressed with Zacha this series. Coyle turned up big. I have no doubt about Charlie Mac's quality but he wasn't his typical self this series. Hampus was bad. Marshy was good, JDB was good.
They choked. It’s OK to acknowledge it. This team is vastly better than the Panthers, and they spit the bit. The weight of expectations crushed them. It happens.
I’ll be the fly in the ointment. They have sneaky big problems, even with those guys.
Just filling in the roster next year is going to be a challenge. Between those contracts and the bonus overages for Bergeron and Krejci, they have ~$6 million to sign something like 6-7 forwards, plus resign Frederic and Swayman (or take what they’re given in arbitration). So at minimum, the pipe dream people had of resigning Bertuzzi needs to die, it almost literally can’t happen. So money has to come out somewhere. Maybe now that they’re down to the last year of it, you can get a taker for Mike Reilly, but he also spent the entire year in Providence. Forbort also has one left, but somehow this team thinks they’re better with him on the ice. Trade Carlo, and you trade a young stay-at-home defenceman that somehow was one of the team’s better skaters in this series. Grzelcyk is also on his last year, so maybe, but that’s still just $3.7m for next season. You’ll need every forward they still have signed, full stop. Ullmark’s NMC does turn into a 16-team NTC this summer, but is Swayman ready for 55+ games? Is Bussi ready to be an NHL backup with 35 games on his plate?
There’s a reason the organization looked at this season as the last shot to push all-in. With Pastrnak getting his big payday, they were going to lose that roster flexibility that made them monsters.
I think they were a team that played max effort every game that didn’t have another gear. Where as, Florida kind of sandbagged in the regular season because they went through this last year.
There might be something to this. I feel like we've said it before about the Bruins too.
