After Another Disheartening Defeat, What's Next For The Sub-Par Boston Bruins?

With five minutes left in the third period of their tilt against the Ottawa Senators on Saturday, the Boston Bruins looked like they had the game in hand. But from that point on, the Bruins got a reality check – and another disappointing result in a season chock full of them.

First, Boston gave up a goal by Sens defenseman Nick Jensen to pull Ottawa to within a single goal and put the score at 5-4 in favor of the Bruins. Then, with only 12 seconds left in regulation time, the Senators scored again to force extra time. And after that, the Bs couldn’t score in overtime and wound up losing to the Sens 6-5 in the shootout. It was a thoroughly disheartening result for Boston, who have posted a 3-6-2 record in their past 11 games and fallen out of an Eastern Conference wild-card spot. And this current stretch is something we’ve rarely, if ever, seen out of the Bruins in recent years.

Is it time for Bruins management and fans to panic? Maybe not a full-blown, armpits-drenched-in-sweat type of panic, but we’re getting perilously close to legitimate panic mode. And if they do fall further out of playoff contention, Boston is going to have some stark choices to make in the coming weeks.

The Bruins still have one of the weakest offenses in the NHL this season, with a goals-for average of 2.70 per game – the 26th-worst average in the league. And somehow, things have gotten progressively worse in that category in recent weeks. Indeed, in their recent six-game losing skid that started on New Year's Eve and went till Jan. 9, there were four games in which they produced one goal or fewer. And even when the offense has delivered, there were two games in that span where Boston scored four goals and still managed to lose.

And now, with a particularly tough stretch of their schedule immediately ahead of them, the Bruins are faced with several different roads forward. Do they stick with the status quo? Are they a buyer or a seller at the trade deadline? And do they have to implement on-ice style changes to become a more dangerous squad?

Well, from this writer’s perspective, standing pat is the least likely way to get back into a playoff spot. We should know by this point that former coach Jim Montgomery wasn’t the main problem in Boston. And we should know the Bruins don’t have the personnel to switch up their approach and start playing like the vintage-era New Jersey Devils on ‘D’. This current Boston group is structurally flawed, and nothing interim coach Joe Sacco has been doing should suggest that the Bruins are going to flip a switch and suddenly be the true Stanley Cup threat they’ve been in recent years.

From that point of view, it’s obvious Boston has to trade players – either in the hope of turning things around this season and winning a playoff spot or with an eye toward the long term. The Bruins currently have just over $5.71 million in salary cap space, so in theory, at least, they can try and improve via the trade market. But, here’s the bigger issue – what does Boston have to offer that other teams would actually want?

It’s not as if the Bruins have a boatload of pending UFAs they can convert into long or short-term assets by the March 7 trade deadline. Forward Trent Frederic is the highest-profile looming UFA who could be traded, but this is a player who has only seven goals and 14 points in 47 games. There won’t be a bidding war on anyone the Bruins would consider moving via trade.

Related: Five NHL Trade Destinations For Blackhawks' Taylor Hall and Ryan Donato

Thus, Boston GM Don Sweeney has next-to-no leverage in any trade talks, especially if his plan is to off-load his team’s sub-par players on another team. And that means he’s on course to have no choice but to depend on an internal turnaround. But again, that’s a scary proposition for Bs fans who’ve become utterly disenchanted by what they’ve seen this season. There’s an increasingly high likelihood that the Bruins are locked in for the rest of the year and that they have to try a major roster shakeup this summer.

We can debate what the Bruins ought to be doing until we’re blue in the face, but here’s the truth: not only are they out of a post-season wild-card spot at the moment, but they’re also in acute danger of being leapfrogged by the Montreal Canadiens, who are only two standings points behind them, and who have two games in hand on the Bruins. Similarly, Boston is just two points ahead of the Philadelphia Flyers, three points ahead of the New York Rangers (who have two games in hand on the Bruins), and four points ahead of the Detroit Red Wings (who also have two games in hand on the Bs). The immediate future does not look bright for Boston, to say the least.

For the first time in a very long time, there are more grey clouds than silver linings hovering over the Bruins, and Sweeney isn’t in a position to effect the type of change that will send his team back into the post-season this spring. And for Boston fans accustomed to dominating play from their beloved Bruins, the awful results the Bs are delivering may be a sign of even worse days to come.

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