ALGARY, Alberta - In the last few days, which were tense and seemed oh so long, the Bruins' coach and players said it was early in the season, the team was .500, and it was far too soon to invoke Chicken Little's contention that the sky was falling.
The sky may not be falling, but thunder, lightning, and heavy rain have been pelting the team for more than a week.
Last night, after a 3-2 loss to the Calgary Flames at the Saddledome, the Bruins limped home with a 3-4-1 record, a four-game losing streak, and a 1-4-0 mark on the Western swing.
President and general manager Harry Sinden, who was not sighted last night, expressed dismay at how the club was playing before and after the Bruins' 6-1 loss in Edmonton Tuesday. Another loss likely won't help his mood or that of embattled coach Pat Burns, who tried to help his club regroup after each defeat.
Burns was peeved at his club's very slow start last night.
''We thought the game was at 8, the game was at 7, but somebody told them it was at 8 so we started a little bit late,'' said Burns, referring to his team's surrendering of three goals before the halfway mark of the first period.
''The second half of the game we were all right. The first part, we weren't there.''
But Burns, who spent the two days leading up to last night's game stressing basic hockey and a more conservative approach, said the team will regroup before Thursday's game at the FleetCenter against the Washington Capitals.
''What do we do? We go back and work hard, that's what we do, and try to get everything in place and we go back at it again,'' said Burns. ''We don't commit suicide, we don't kill ourselves. This is the [eighth] game. I think we've got a lot more hockey to go. We'll let some guys heal and mend and we'll go at it again.''
The coach's strategy of being more conservative seemed valid considering the porous defense and lack of offense in the last three games. But it was thrown off-kilter early in the first period when 20-year-old rookie goalie Andrew Raycroft struggled early and gave up three goals in a span of 5:47.
Raycroft, who has been asked to grow up and develop too fast for reason, has been put in the untenable position of having to backstop an NHL team during a slump because of injuries to Byron Dafoe and John Grahame.
In his first two starts, he looked up to the task. Last night, in the early going, he looked like he wasn't ready to assume such a heavy load just yet.
The rest of the Bruins looked as bad, if not worse. They had a hard time stringing two passes together, and for long stretches were pinned in their own end.
Center Jason Allison, Boston's premier forward, seemed to have a particularly hard time, making turnovers he'd never make under normal conditions.
The game started off optimistically enough for Boston. The Bruins had a power play only 36 seconds into the action but couldn't generate so much as a shot.
Less than a minute after the man-advantage expired, the Flames potted their first goal. Raycroft, who normally doesn't wander much, got lured out of the net with disastrous results.
Defenseman Phil Housley, with defenseman Kyle McLaren giving chase, raced from left to right behind the net with the puck and with Raycroft down and out, he dished a pass to center Jarome Iginla parked in front of net. Iginla, with an empty cage in front of him, buried it for the 1-0 lead at 3:20.
Less than a minute and a half later, the lead was 2-0 on a highlight-film goal at 4:36. Allison had teed up a slapper from the right circle that came hard off the pads of goalie Fred Brathwaite. Right wing Valeri Bure picked it up and skated it end to end.
From the point, he blasted a shot and forward Jeff Shantz tipped it past Raycroft.
The hole became deeper at 9:07 when center Jason Wiemer ripped a shot past Raycroft to make it a three-goal cushion.
At 17:06, it looked as if the Bruins might finally break through when they had a two-on-none coming up the ice. But forward Mikko Eloranta, who left the game after one period because of the flu, had his stick lifted from behind by Flames defenseman Toni Lyman, preventing the shot.
It was a microcosm of the last little while here, where nothing has gone right for Boston.
After a shaky beginning, Raycroft settled down and made some strong saves. But at the other end, the Bruins had a hard time generating an attack.
With 1:55 left in the period, center Joe Thornton had a tip-in chance but Brathwaite stopped it. The rebound came out to defenseman Darren Van Impe, who had plenty of empty net to shoot at but the puck bounced right over his stick.
In the final minute of the second, Boston got on the board as a result of center Samme Pahlsson's first NHL goal. With only 6.7 ticks on the clock, right wing Andrei Kovalenko, who was playing even though he was ill, made a pass from the right post across the crease to Pahlsson, who banged it in from the left to make it 3-1.
The Bruins climbed within a goal midway through the third period, which was by far their best. Just eight seconds into a power play, Allison centered a pass in front for Thornton, who banged it past Brathwaite to make it 3-2. But that was as close as they'd come. Burns said as gloomy as the loss was, there was something positive to come out of it.
''We were in the game for 40 minutes anyway,'' said Burns, ''instead of not in it for 60.''
