The Bruins looked slightly better today, but still could not put together a sixty minute effort. To be fair, it was very close, but Daniel Brière scored with .4 seconds left in the game to propel the Avalanche to victory. The Bruins fell apart defensively with Zdeno Chara and Dougie Hamilton not on the ice, something that has become a theme in this young season.

I’m going to break down why the personnel was on the ice, and then a line by line breakdown of the play.

Heres the shift chart for the defenseman in the last ten minutes of the game.

Within the last 5 minutes, the pairing of Bartkowski and Seidenberg played a combined total of 21 seconds leading up to that goal (from 4:57 to 4:36 left in the game). They were rested. Refreshed.

Chara and Hamilton had just come off of a 48 second shift, and needed rest. As much as we would like to have that pairing play the full 60 minutes – They cant.

The forward line out there: Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron, Reilly Smith – Basically the best thing Bruins fans could have hoped for on that front. One of the best defensive lines in hockey out to try to run out the clock.

Heres the play in question:

The Breakdown:

:08 – :10 – Matt Bartkowski sees Brad Marchand alone along the hashmarks that Brière and Seidenberg just vacated, and rims the puck around to Marchand.

:10 – :13 – Marchand stands still looking for a pass, being shadow guarded by Nathan MacKinnon

:13 – :15 – Marchand passes the puck a good five to ten feet in front of a streaking Bergeron, and the pass is broken up by Brad Stuart

:15 – :19 – Reilly Smith lazily swipes at the puck, and all of the Bruins are going the wrong way. Alex Tanguay takes the pass from MacKinnon and enters the zone. 30 seconds left in the game.

:19 – :21 – Tanguay threads the needle between the stick and feet of Seidenberg, right before the back checking Marchand can get a stick on the puck.

:21 – 22 – MacKinnon moves in and gets a nice chance on Niklas Svedberg.

:22 – :27 – Scrum in front, puck ends up in the corner on MacKinnon’s stick. 22 seconds left in the game.

I’m going to skip forward to :38 into the video, with 10 seconds left in the game. The twelve seconds in between are relatively inconsequential to the end result – the Bruins lose some board battles and cant seem to clear the puck.

:38 – :43 – Nathan MacKinnon shields the puck from Seidenberg, and then beats both Bergeron and Seidenberg in a battle for the puck. 5 seconds left in the game.

:43 – :45 – Dennis Seidenberg turns to find his man, looks at the one right next to the net uncovered, and then proceeds to split the difference between MacKinnon and Brière, effectively covering none of them.

:45 – :46 – All three Bruins forwards form in a line within ten feet of each other, and Bergeron and Marchand could have hugged each other. All three are above the top of the face off circles. Two seconds left.

:46 – :48 – Jan Hejda’s shot gets through the mess of bodies, Svedberg makes the initial save but throws the rebound out in front where neither Seidenberg nor Bartkowski can get to it. .4 seconds left.

:49 – Brière scores. Game over.

Who’s to blame?

You can assign some blame to everyone on this play, though some warrant it more than others.

Svedberg: Deserves blame the least on this play, but he could have tried to steer the puck to the corner instead of back out in front, but I don’t know if he saw the puck all the way or it was a positional save. He had to have known a shot was coming with less than five seconds to go in the period.

Seidenberg: Got caught in no mans land after looking directly at the goal scorer standing to the side of Svedberg. The fact that he was nowhere in sight towards the end of the video. If he moved to the front and covered Brière, he would have been in good position if MacKinnon got the puck in the corner and had to come at him.

Bartkowski: At least you had a man. Granted, it was the wrong one, and you too got caught puck watching, and drifted out with Alex Tanguay towards the high slot, leaving Brière alone in front.

Marchand: You failed to get the puck deep, and missed on a pass that you had two to three seconds to make. Then you got sucked over to the side where the puck was, leading to having all three Bruins forwards on one side of the ice, above the faceoff circle.

Bergeron: You’re coming off of two Selkes in three years. You know you shouldn’t have all three forwards above the face off dots.

Smith: Weak swipe of the puck and a nice wide curl in the neutral zone instead of stopping and starting, and then being in that jumble of bodies near where Hejda shot from, you can’t be as grouped up as that.