While the Boston Bruins received a bump under new coach Joe Sacco, it appears they haven’t totally eliminated their penchant for lopsided losses.
The Bruins are 15-12-3 overall — and 7-3-0 since Sacco took over for the fired Jim Montgomery on Nov. 19 — yet they have a minus-19 goal differential this season, tied for the fifth worst in the NHL after an 8-1 defeat at Winnipeg on Tuesday.
The Bruins will look to avoid another setback like that when they visit the Seattle Kraken on Thursday.
Although Boston was riding a four-game winning streak, Bruins captain Brad Marchand admitted he had a bad feeling as the team opened a five-game trip with the stop in Winnipeg.
“This was coming,” Marchand said. “Our practices have been sloppy, our execution has been off there, and it bleeds into games. The way you practice is how you play, it starts there and we haven’t been good enough. So, we need to do a better job at being good in practice and that will translate to games.
“(The Jets) were very good. They were good and we were not good. We weren’t executing. We were lost in our coverage and we were lost in our battles. So yeah, they were good, they made plays, but we did not have a good game.”
It was the Bruins’ seventh loss of the season by three or more goals, though their first under Sacco.
David Pastrnak scored midway through the second period to cut Boston’s deficit to 3-1 before the Jets pulled away with a five-goal third. Pastrnak has a team-high 28 points, and he has 10 goals, one behind Marchand’s club-leading total.
“It’s 3-1 after two periods. We’ve been in that position before,” Sacco said. “We thought that we could certainly work our way back into the game but we didn’t. … But there’s things that we need to address and correct, and we will.”
Bruins goaltender Jeremy Swayman stopped just 27 of 35 shots.
“Some of the goals that I let in I just know I can stop,” Swayman said. “I hold myself to a standard, and when you let those in, it’s not a great feeling so I want to make sure that doesn’t happen again. …
“We didn’t use the momentum that we built (winning four straight). We’ve got four more games this road trip. We’re going to take one game at a time and I’m excited for that.”
The Kraken returned home Tuesday to meet the defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers after going 3-1-0 on a four-game trip to Carolina and the New York metropolitan area to face the Islanders, Devils and Rangers. Despite a couple of late breakaways in overtime, Seattle had to settle for a 2-1 shootout defeat to the Panthers.
Chandler Stephenson scored the lone goal for the Kraken on a first-period breakaway and goalie Joey Daccord made 32 saves. Jared McCann got a secondary assist on Stephenson’s tally, McCann’s 100th helper for the Kraken since being chosen in the 2021 NHL expansion draft.
McCann is day-to-day with an undisclosed injury after not practicing Wednesday.
“We’ll take the point,” Stephenson said. “Obviously, it would have been nice (to win), but at the same time, we still did some good things. But I think we’ll just look to be better next game. … Joey played outstanding for us, gave us a chance, and we just couldn’t buy one in overtime.”
