

By Anthony Travalgia, Bruins Daily

As a team fighting for its playoff lives, losses in eight of 10 in the middle of February is never a good thing.

On Sunday in Chicago the Bruins snapped their six-game skid with an impressive 6-2 win over the Blackhawks. It was a win that seemed to pump some life back into the Black and Gold who were close to flat lining in the Eastern Conference playoff race. As important as the win was, how they followed up the win was set to be more important.

Are the Bruins ready to head in the right direction, or was the win just a tease, many wondered. Well, unfortunately for the B's, it was the latter.

I mean, we werent quite as sharp as we were Sunday. We did have a lot of shots and a lot of rebounds right around the net, but we werent there quite enough, said defenseman Dennis Seidenberg who logged 20:14 of ice time Tuesday night. They got a lucky bounce on the first one off my stick, and the other one was off of a screen. We played okay, but it wasnt enough, and again there were loose pucks we just couldnt get at.

The Bruins opened the game the way they wanted with Daniel Pallies first goal since November 21 followed by a very impressive second period. But the stellar play of Canucks goalie Eddie Lack (40 saves) and goals by Ryan Stanton and Zack Kassian were just enough to halt Boston from building off Sundays win as they dropped Tuesdays contest, 2-1.

There were a lot of bouncing pucks and scrambles in front of Lacks net. But on this night, Lady Luck was not on the Bruins side.

Its very frustrating. I mean, you have to work for your luck, right? added Seidenberg. So I guess the coaches are going to look at the tape and see what we couldve done better, if we couldve done something better. Im sure we could.

By no means did the Bruins play a bad game, but two breakdowns did them in -- costing the Bs two very important points. Kassians game winning goal at 6:47 of the third period came off of a turnover by Bruins forward Jordan Caron.

The chances were there for the Bruins and they just couldnt seem to finish when they needed to.

I think that the only thing we talk about here is pretty simple. Its not the offense; its the lack of finish, head coach Claude Julien told reporters after the loss.

I think when you come back from a long road trip like we did, we all know that that first game becomes a challenge, and I thought our guys handled it well. I thought we came out there, skated, worked hard, you know, dominated the game. [We] had lots of shots and scoring chances, but the inability to finish is the only reason that were sitting here tonight with a loss.

Part of the reason as to why the Bruins struggled to finish their chances was due to the tremendous play of Lack, who was two saves away from a season-high.

It was real good. I always thought Eddie [Lack] was good. He was so good the other night against the Islanders, he was unbelievable there and he just followed up again tonight," Canucks head coach Willie Desjardins said of his goaltender. "He made some real big saves for us. Its good to see; you like to see a guy getting hot."

The Bruins missed the chance to create a bit of space between them, the Florida Panthers, and Philadelphia Flyers, both of whom lost Tuesday night and are looking up at the Bruins in the standings.

Julien's bunch will need to start stringing some wins together or else the offseason is going to come a lot sooner than anyone in Boston would like.