A matinee idle for uninspired Bruins

[ Game summary ]

By Kevin Paul Dupont, Globe Staff, 2/9/2003

est players, best effort, best results.

Sometimes it works that way, and it certainly went to form yesterday on Causeway Street when the Mario Lemieux-Alexei Kovalev Penguins stormed past the Bruins, 5-2, before a disappointed full house of 17,565 at the FleetCenter.

''Playing against the Big Two like that ...,'' mused Bruins captain Joe Thornton, no slacker himself with a pair of goals, ''it's tough to be effective when those two are on their game.''

Likewise, the Bruins won't win many of their remaining 28 games if they roll out the B game they brought into yesterday's matinee.

They arrived for the 3 p.m. puck drop like a bunch of tourists who stumbled out of a Duck Tour that stopped on Causeway Street.

For the better part of three hours, the Penguins chased the lame ducks all over the ice.

''You can't come out and not play for the first 40 minutes and expect to win,'' said Bruins coach Robbie Ftorek, whose squad is 1-2-0-1 in its last four games and the euphoria of netminder Jeff Hackett's arrival clearly worn off. ''I'd say the right team won today.''

No one, not even an Olympic Russian judge (wink wink, nudge nudge) could dispute the outcome. Lemieux finished with four assists, including the 1,000th of his NHL career, and Kovalev had a pair of goals and two assists. Even the much lesser-skilled Steve McKenna popped in a couple of goals, helping to turn what could have been a marketing bonanza - a win before a child-stocked audience - into a Beantown bust.

''No rhyme nor reason for it,'' said Ftorek, displeased with his club's tepid effort, especially on faceoffs - the Bruins losing nearly three of every five draws. ''Just the way it is.''

After an emotional 6-3 win over the Canadiens Friday, the Bruins failed to show up with the same speed, spirit, and body contact against the bigger, more gifted Penguins. Once beyond the Lemieux-Kovalev combination, the Penguins aren't overbearing by any means, but on this day, there was no getting by that 1-2 combination. While the Bruins fell short on all parts of their game - save Jumbo Joe's two goals - the Penguins at times played like the squad that rattled off Cup victories in 1991 and '92. They may be in an eight-week struggle to make the playoffs, but yesterday the Penguins looked like the menacing offensive force that routinely chewed up the NHL a decade ago.

Among Boston's biggest woes: defense. With Sean O'Donnell out with a wrenched knee, Boston's blue man group is pale. Ftorek opted to scratch veteran Don Sweeney and rolled in Sean Brown, a forward all season, in hopes of countering Pittsburgh's oversized forwards. But the patchwork defense had too many holes, and the likes of Lemieux and Kovalev made the most of them.

McKenna and Kovalev each struck in the first half of the second period, giving the Penguins a 2-0 lead by the 9:52 mark. Thornton's first goal at 11:51 chopped the lead in half, but former Bruin Randy Robitaille, once an AHL scoring wonder, raced up ice 14 seconds later to bump the Penguins' lead back to two, 3-1. Killer.

And less than three minutes later, Kovalev struck for his second of the day, drilling home a one-time slapper off a Jan Hrdina feed into the left circle. The Pittsburgh lead stood at 4-1 with just more than 25 minutes to play. Time to load the Black-and-Gold bodies back onto the Duck Tour.

''Obviously, we knew what Mario and Kovalev could do to us,'' said Thornton. ''And obviously, they beat us.''

On the flip (flipped) side, too many Bruins did a whole lot of nothing. Witness: Jozef Stumpel, once considered the No. 2 pivot behind Thornton, finished a minus-3 and did not land a shot on net. Stumpel is a stupefying 0-5-5 in his last 12 games. The Brian Rolston-P.J. Axelsson-Martin Lapointe line, a supercharged trio vs. Montreal, managed nine of Boston's 28 shots, but Rolston had seven of those, with many coming on power-play point duty. The line finished without a point.

The greatest concern could be the backline. Minus O'Donnell, there is a lack of savvy and grit, pressing more minutes on the likes of Bryan Berard and Jonathan Girard. Ftorek made the point that Shaone Morrisonn (7:07 ice time yesterday) was one of five options the Bruins considered when reaching down to Providence for an O'Donnell replacement. Now it could be time to work Sweeney back into the mix, or consider another body (Jeff Jillson?) from Providence.

''We've got some guys who aren't used to playing defense at the NHL level,'' said Ftorek.

That, among other things, was the lesson of the day.

This story ran on page E1 of the Boston Globe on 2/9/2003.
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