The sweep of the NHL is a single game from Wednesday night. With three other games covered by PHN, we start and end in Denver, where the Boston Bruins were visiting the Avalanche and both needed a win.
The Bruins found way to recover some of their old selves and thumped the Avs, 6-2.
“The focus and determination of our group was really good tonight,” Bruins coach Claude Julien said. “We realized we were giving up too many goals and we had to respect the part of the game without the puck. Part of it was having layers and not having that many breakdowns.
“We talked about managing the puck and making better decisions with it so you don’t allow the other team to get those opportunities. We did a better job of that overall. We seem to have good starts in every game so far this year and that couldn’t change, but we had to extend the 20-minute game to a 60-minute game.”
Jonas Gustavsson made 20 saves in the win for the Bruins.
It was more than the Bruins well in the loss for the Avs. Their effort was less than their coaching staff wanted and their bench boss was not pleased after the game.
“I’m not happy, I’m not happy at all,” Avalanche coach Patrick Roy said. “We didn’t compete like we should. We turned the puck over on the last four goals, we made poor decisions in the neutral zone. It can’t happen.
“I understand if we don’t have our ‘A’ game. That doesn’t mean to be 5-0 in the hole before we start playing. We need to keep things simple and wait for a good opportunity to score a goal. That’s the thing we need to learn.”
Semyon Varlamov had 14 saves on 19 shots before being yanked for Reto Berra in the second period.
“You can’t play like this,” Roy said. “If we want to make the playoffs this is not the type of performance we need. We need more consistency from our guys and we definitely need to be better in our own end. We were awful tonight, that’s all.”
The Avs catch a break Friday, maybe, in their visit to Anaheim to play the equally struggling Ducks.
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