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RED WINGS 5, BRUINS 4 [ Game stats ]
Their stars too much for Bruins
Six games without a victory. Last night's 5-4 loss to the surging Detroit Red Wings at the FleetCenter was the latest setback in the Bruins' recent tailspin that has reached 0-3-3.
Did Boston play badly? No. But the Red Wings' big guns got the job done. The same couldn't be said about the Bruins, who didn't get enough from some of their top forwards (re: Jason Allison and, as a domino effect, Dave Andreychuk, for starters).
Yes, the Red Wings are the best team in the league at the moment but the Bruins are in a trouble zone and the trend is an obvious concern for coach Pat Burns.
''We've got to get some kind of offense out of our top two lines,'' said Burns, who pulled Anson Carter out of the checking-line center role and put him back on the right side with Andreychuk and Allison.
''Jason Allison's got to get going. We ask ourselves why Andreychuk hasn't scored in a while, Allison's got to get going. If he doesn't get going, Andreychuk falls off a little bit.
''The guys who are going to make you win are your offensive weapons. If they don't go, I don't know how we're going to do it. I don't care if the Lord is behind the bench right now and Moses is GM, it's not going to make a difference. Those guys have to win you hockey games. If they don't produce and they don't win you hockey games, you don't know how you're going to do it.''
Allison said four goals should be enough for the Bruins to win. In his mind, giving up five and the errors in execution were the bigger problems.
''I think we've struggled a little bit as a line and individually, too,'' Allison acknowledged. ''We still had four goals tonight. We don't usually get four. I think there was more to it than not scoring. They made us pay on our mistakes. We had a few too many.
''We had four goals. Do you want us to get six? I don't think our offense was the problem. It was our mistakes. I wouldn't press the panic button over tonight's game. Mistakes can be fixed.''
The Bruins are only one game over .500 and don't look like the desperate team they should for the position they're in.
The Red Wings jumped out to a 1-0 lead on a power-play goal by Slava Kozlov (two goals) at 3:34 of the first period. Defenseman Kyle McLaren, despite being bothered by an injured left thumb, tied it at 4:51 on a breakaway when he took a lead pass from left wing P.J. Axelsson and beat goalie Manny Legace with a forehand shot.
Defenseman Niklas Lidstrom made it 2-1 at 11:03 but the Bruins rallied to tie it late in the second period when Sergei Samsonov scored his seventh goal while Boston was on a power play at 18:08.
The Bruins got their only lead of the game at 1:14 of the third when Joe Thornton scored his seventh of the year. The next three goals belonged to the Red Wings.
Detroit tied it, 3-3, at 5:11 when defenseman Larry Murphy made a perfect pass to Kozlov in the right circle. Kozlov one-timed a shot past goalie Byron Dafoe for his second goal of the night.
It was a bit of revenge for Kozlov, who had to be helped to the dressing room with a little more than four minutes left in the second. McLaren drilled him with an open-ice check, knocking Kozlov to his knees. Kozlov looked as if he got the wind knocked out of him and retired to the room but returned to make the Bruins pay.
The Red Wings went ahead to stay at 9:38 when defenseman Steve Duchesne scored to make it 4-3. Stacy Roest, low in the left circle, fed the puck to Duchesne, who ripped a shot past Dafoe.
Detroit captain Steve Yzerman sealed it with a power-play goal at 16:23 with the Red Wings on a four-on-three advantage. The Bruins got one back when Carter scored with 21.6 seconds left in regulation with Boston on a two-man advantage, but it was too little, too late.
''[The Red Wings] make you pay for your mistakes,'' said right wing Joe Murphy. ''Right now, they're the best team in the league. They're better than us right now. We want to be where they [are] and we're not there yet.''
Not there is right. The question right now is, where, exactly, are they?
This story ran on page C01 of the Boston Globe on 12/12/99.
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