Rob Grabowski – USA TODAY Sports
Maybe we can ascribe the Boston Bruins‘ terrible performance in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final to the presence of the infinitely-hyped supermoon, the brighter and bigger than normal full moon that hung in the sky tonight. The full moon often causes odd behavior, after all, and there’s no other way to explain how suddenly awful the entire team decided to be–especially when they suddenly found themselves down a very, very important man.
Where do we even begin? Despite the fact that it was a rather thin margin of loss, there was so much wrong with the team out there. The supposed top defensive pairing of Zdeno Chara and Dennis Seidenberg were dreadful, so bad they were eventually separated like two naughty kids who won’t stop talking in class. That later led to Chara breaking Corey Crawford‘s shutout, although the fact that the Bruins didn’t give number 50 much work was thoroughly unsatisfying to watch after they realized his glove side was weak in Game 4. As a result, Crawford is probably feeling pretty cocky now, exactly the opposite of what the Bruins should’ve done.
Patrice Bergeron, such an important part of this team, left the ice and needed to be taken to a local hospital for observation. When a player needs to leave in the ambulance, that’s never a good thing, but it is especially bad for the team’s best defensive forward and best center. As a result, David Krejci decided to be absolutely terrible at the faceoff dot for some reason.
Other players continued to test the waters of actually being useful, only to never go in it. At this point, it’s not even worth it to think about the idea of Tyler Seguin or Jaromir Jagr doing anything that would show up on the most important bit of the score sheet, since it’s really unlikely to happen. But if Brad Marchand continues to be missing in action, especially when he was prolific during the season, then that’s not good either, especially if Bergeron is out too.
Then, of course, there’s the matter of the missed call on Torey Krug that led directly to an empty-net goal as well as the fact that the Bruins never once went on a 5-on-4 power play. It was always a 4-on-4, if it was called at all. Let me be clear: officiating is not the only reason Boston lost this game, not by a long shot, but when these two teams are freakishly well-matched and the referees decide to be bad at their jobs, people notice.
The one upside to this game is that Carl Soderberg managed to be pretty good in his Final debut. He even had to step into roles he probably didn’t expect to take after Bergeron left the game. That is literally the only good thing that happened.
So now it comes down to this: a Game 6 at home on Monday night at 8 p.m. Are you nervous yet? I sure am.
