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THRASHERS 8, BRUINS 3 [ Game summary ]
Who knows if any of that factored into what happened on Causeway Street last night, but a humiliating 8-3 loss to the expansion Atlanta Thrashers left the once-proud Original Six franchise looking confused, comatose, and still in desperate need of someone (come back, Blaine Lacher, all is forgiven) to play their net.
Rookie forward Tomi Kallio picked up his first career hat trick and former BC High winger Dean Sylvester scored twice, pacing the Thrashers to only their second win this season before a dismayed and often critical (as in exhausted from booing) crowd of 14,362. When it was over, there must have been fewer than 1,000 people left in the building, the seats as empty as the effort the Bruins mounted in losing for the eighth time in 10 games.
''A hard lesson to learn along the way,'' mused coach-of-the-hour Mike Keenan, whose charges have won but twice since he took over for Pat Burns. ''You have to learn what level of respect you have to bring to your game and what that means.''
Translation: the Bruins thought second-year Atlantans would be easier to knock off than a six-pack at the company picnic. In the end, all they got was the hangover.
On top of it all, the injury list grew with the loss of veteran defenseman Paul Coffey to a concussion. Given the way he played leading up to getting dinged, Coffey may have suffered the most fortuitous bell-ringing in the history of North American sport. He was on the ice for three straight Atlanta goals, including getting his doors blown off in the first period when Sylvester roared past him with a high school dipsy-doodle, the former Li'l Eagle tapping a pass to himself on the right-wing boards, skipping past Coffey, collecting his own pass, then firing a bomb past starting netminder Kay Whitmore.
Whitmore, too, might have benefitted from a knock on the noggin. Two nights before, he registered his first NHL victory since April 18, 1995. When Sergei Samsonov nailed a 25-foot turnaround backhander for a 1-0 lead halfway through the first period, Whitmore looked as if he was on the way to yet another win.
Then came the crash. The Thrashers knocked two quick ones behind Whitmore, including the first by Kallio and Sylvester, for a 2-1 lead by 13:44. The strikes came only 25 seconds apart, and each shot made an obvious dent in the Bruins's psyche. Shot, goal, boo. Shot, goal, boo. Hoping to build on the 5-4 win over the Hawks only 24 hours before, the Bruins dissolved on their own sheet of ice before a crowd that sounded as if it couldn't wait to get to a pay phone to call all-hate radio.
''It's like anything else in life,'' said veteran blue-liner Don Sweeney, trying to explain what ails his team. ''When things don't go your way, you start to search rather than rely on fundamental things. When things do go well, we seem to thrive. In reverse, we seem not to have the confidence to pull ourselves out of it.''
And it's turning into one heck of a hole. The Bruins face the Leafs tonight in Toronto. Unless the front office finds lightning in a bottle, the Bruins will be backed by their third- (Andrew Raycroft) or fourth-string (Whitmore) goalie. Few NHL clubs can win with any regularity with a No. 2 goalie. Nos. 3 and 4, at most, usually only see off-day practices and once-in-a-lifetime backup duty. Right now, the Bruins live or die (usually the latter) with either their raw rookie or journeyman between the pipes. Whitmore was pulled after allowing six goals in 40 minutes. Raycroft stopped six of eight shots in the third.
''This is a loss that they probably learned more from than any other,'' said Keenan, who may have been wishing with those words more than stating fact. ''You have to be prepared at a very rich level, emotionally and physically, to play this game.
''It's human nature to think, `This is going to be easy tonight.' The next thing you know, you are embarrassed.''
That they were. And if nothing else, they're becoming consistent with that.
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K, let's see, they have fired the coach, watched their general manager step aside after 28-plus years, and if they didn't know better, the Bruins might wonder if some hacker cracked Vault security and programmed some sinister doomsday virus into their game.