Clearly the Bruins weren’t using it as an excuse for poor performances in the two games they have played inside the bubble in Toronto, but they also weren’t shying away from opinions on the ice quality at the Scotiabank Arena either.
The Leafs' home arena served as host for all Eastern Conference bubble games over the weekend, and the Bruins and Flyers were the first to play on the frozen sheet on Sunday for their round robin game, a 4-1 loss for the Black and Gold. Sunday’s matinee took place after three qualifying round playoff games were hosted on that ice throughout the day on Saturday, and clearly the frozen sheet got chewed up a bit.
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It was readily apparent when pucks were bouncing more than usual once both teams got a few minutes into the period and the Bruins stubbornly tried to play a fancy passing game when the conditions clearly weren’t favoring that approach. At one point, Charlie Coyle had a clear path to the net and a head of steam, but lost the handle when the puck simply hopped off his stick in what would have otherwise been a golden scoring chance.
Conventional hockey wisdom dictated that the heavy usage of the Scotiabank Arena ice combined with the Toronto summer humidity would compromise the ice conditions for summer playoff hockey to some degree.
Some of the B’s certainly saw it that way on Sunday afternoon after the loss.
Boston Bruins
“We need to maybe change our mentality a little bit. We need to get away from those pretty plays. We make one pass, we put it on net and we recover a puck and then those seams for those pretty plays will be there,” said Torey Krug. “Let’s just change our mentality: One pass, put it on net and work hard to recover pucks. It’s obvious that things are bouncing out there, so we’ll change the way we approach things and hopefully it works out for us.
“[The ice quality] is sloppy. The first five minutes of periods are probably when you can make your plays and then after that it’s about putting the puck in the right spot and putting the ‘D’ on the opposing team in difficult positions to make plays with the puck. Both teams have to play on it and make plays when they’re there. [We need to] be accountable and take care of the puck [depending] on the time and score. Look at the second half of periods, it looks like it’s bouncing around out there. We need to just be smarter about it.”
Clearly it was about a lot more than the ice as the Bruins were going through the motions a bit in a round robin game vs. the Flyers that didn’t have a playoff feel to it. And it’s just as obvious that both sides are playing in the same ice conditions, and the very same “sloppy” state of the ice didn’t seem to slow down the Flyers at all in an impressive win.
Either way, a simpler approach to see the puck, shoot the puck and recover the puck might be exactly what the Bruins need after they were far too casual in most aspects of their game in Sunday afternoon’s loss to the Flyers.