Coming into this afternoon, the Minnesota Wild had lost 23 of their last 28 games.
After losing in Winnipeg on Friday night, I felt like the Boston Bruins would bounce back but boy was I wrong. For the fourth time in nine games, the B's were shut out as the Wild won 2-0 at the XCel Energy Center.
Minnesota (26-24-9) goaltender Nicklas Backstrom stopped a career-high 48 shots which is somewhat misleading. As is usually the case when the Bruins (35-20-2) are struggling, they pile up gaudy shot totals but the truth of the matter is that most come on shots from the point (which rarely go in during an NHL game). So credit to Backstrom but other than two Daniel Paille breakaways and what should have been a goal by Milan Lucic, he didn't have to do anything extraordinary.
This rough patch by Boston is attributed to more than just having Nathan Horton and Rich Peverley out of the lineup. The entire team appears to lack energy not to mention, they turn the puck over way too much and can't seem to score at all anymore. So yeah, it's time to make some type of move before this goes on for much longer.
The Wild scored both of their goals in the second period. Chad Rau (2nd of the season) looked off Tim Thomas (27 saves; 24-12-0) but ripped a shot past him at 10:15 from Dany Heatley and Cal Clutterbuck (one of the best names in sports).
Matt Cullen (12th of the season) doubled the lead at 15:30 with a power-play strike from Devin Setoguchi and Jared Spurgeon. Showing how much this wasn't Boston's day, Cullen mishit it at first but had time and space to recover and fire again, this time successfully into the net.
The only question at that point was if the Bruins would avoid the shutout. There was no chance they would rally from down two. Of course, they couldn't muster a single goal. As we've come to expect, Shawn Thornton was one of the only Boston players that appeared to have any type of a pulse. He fought scrub Matt Kassian early in the third in what turned out to be one of the longest fights I've seen this season.
At 1-2, Boston is halfway through its grueling six-game road trip. Not sure if it's a good thing or not but the B's get a few days off before visiting St. Louis on Wednesday to play the Blues. Boston has proven that they can lose to anyone right now but let it be noted that the Blues are a good hockey team that will be a factor in the Western Conference playoffs.
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