The Boston Bruins, he said, haven’t played well enough. That’s why they’re losing 3-1 in the best-of-7 Eastern Conference Second Round to the Florida Panthers.
Not the calls from officials. Not Sam Bennett’s hit on Brad Marchand in Game 3.
“Listen, we can sit here and point fingers,” the forward said Monday before the Bruins traveled to Florida, a day after a 3-2 loss in Game 4 at TD Garden. “Fortunately, that’s not what we’re going to do today. We had a 2-0 lead. We didn’t give ourselves opportunities and we didn’t play well.
“You have to take it this way: we haven’t been playing well. Unfortunately, that’s not enough right now. We can’t sit there and make excuses about who is to blame. “It’s all 25 guys in our locker room right now, and we have to figure it out.”
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The Bruins need a win to avoid elimination in Game 5 at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Florida, on Tuesday (7 p.m. ET; ESPN, SNO, SNE, TVAS, CBC). They may have Marchand, their captain, back after the forward skated on Monday. Marchand, who missed Game 4 with an upper-body injury believed to have been sustained by Bennett’s hit, made the trip to Florida.
With or without Marchand, there is a goal.
“We just have to go down and win a hockey game,” general manager Don Sweeney said. “Go out there, execute the way we’re capable of and we’ll be fine.”
To do that, however, they have to play more like they did in the first period of Game 4 than they did in the final two periods, when they allowed the Panthers to claw their way back into a game they led by two goals early, scored on their first five. shots of the game.
“We have to work hard,” said Maroon, a three-time Stanley Cup winner (Tampa Bay Lightning, 2020, 2021; St. Louis Blues, 2019). “When we had the advantage, we have to keep pressing. We’re not pushing right now. When we have the advantage, we sit back on our heels and let them dictate the play. We have to start dictating the play more. We have to start coming out with a little more fire in each period.”
Part of the problem has been that the Bruins haven’t gotten enough shots off Panthers goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky. Boston had 15 in Game 2, 17 in Game 3 and 18 in Game 4, all losses.
“We’re not a volume-shooting team,” Sweeney said. “We are trying to achieve quality. In a perfect world, you get both quality and quantity.”
But they need more of them. When asked if they were taking enough shots on goal Sunday, center Charlie Coyle said: “No.”
“We’re still not putting enough pucks in the net,” Maroon said the next day. “Eighteen shots at a goalkeeper in three periods is not enough.”
In Game 4, the Panthers made 14 high-danger shots to the Bruins’ six. Is not sufficient. These are not enough injections. There are not enough rebounds.
Charlie McAvoy, for example, was held without a shot on goal against Florida in the series. Sweeney said Monday that the defenseman is healthy and admitted that he hasn’t “found his groove” offensively. McAvoy has no points against the Panthers; He had four assists in seven games against the Toronto Maple Leafs in the first round.
“We’re not shooting enough from above and I don’t think we’re getting enough traffic,” Maroon said. “I think we have to find those second and third chances where we’re creating chaos and then we jump on loose pucks if they go into the corner. We have to shoot more pucks on the net. We have to put more pucks on net when we have that opportunity. We won’t do it.
“When they finally have (41) shots on net versus our 18, sometimes you can escape with a win. But they have been doing it in the last four games. We need more volume. We need more injections. “We need to be more predictable, just get back to basics.”
That means, for him, being in front control, throwing pucks up and down, throwing pucks on net, creating second and third chances, getting rebounds. Shot volume.
“Put them under a little bit of stress. We haven’t done that in the (offensive) zone,” Maroon said.
But it’s not just the shots. It’s everything else too.
“It’s the little details of the game right now,” Maroon said. “They are turnovers. Maybe it’s not putting pucks out on the PK. They scored their third goal in a zone (offensive) confrontation. We have to figure out what we have to do. We need to be better. That is the conclusion.”
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Maroon said Boston would focus on Game 5 as Game 1, a one-time game it needs to win. It would be focusing not on the result, but on the process. It’s the only way to go.
After all, they’ve seen it before, just two weeks ago. As Maroon and Sweeney pointed out, the Maple Leafs came back to win Games 5 and 6 in the first round after trailing 3-1. The Bruins ultimately won Game 7, but there is life after a 3-1 deficit.
They haven’t finished yet.
“The beauty of this is we have another game,” Maroon said. “We have the opportunity to correct our mistakes. And they’re not the big ones, they’re just the little ones.
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