heir legs turned to cellulite, their shooting hands fell off, and their nose for the net dropped off from frostbite. On a wicked and wintry night, fat chance the Bruins were going to find a doctor willing to make a house call to fix all that.
On a day that began with a long train ride up a snowy Northeast corridor from Philadelphia, the Bruins' journey grew even longer last night with a 3-1 loss to the Buffalo Sabres, played before the smallest crowd (some 8,100) to attend an NHL game in the FleetCenter (and smallest in Boston since 7,012 on Jan. 22, 1987, at the Garden).
After opening with an impressive and surprising burst of energy in the first period, the Bruins flatlined in the second when they were grossly outshot (21-3), handily outscored (2-0), and once again victimized by some questionable (read: brutal) officiating.
The loss, their seventh in the last 10 games, kept the Bruins from inching ahead of Carolina in their fight for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
''We don't have much offense,'' said coach Mike Keenan, underscoring the impact that a bad call - followed by a power-play goal - has on his fragile squad. ''We have to win 2-1, 3-2, 3-1 games. We don't have second-line offensive players. I mean, [Andrei] Kovalenko is supposed to be a second-line scoring winger, and he hasn't scored, in what, two months? Our first unit gets 50 percent of our goals. You aren't going to see us rout teams. You just aren't going to see us do that.''
For the record: The Tank's last goal was Jan. 16. Right now, he is this half's candidate for the Paul Coffey take-the-money-and-bolt Buyout Achievement Award. When July 1 (annual free agency date) hits this summer, the Bruins would be wise to disconnect all phones, lock all windows on Causeway Street, and move their player-acquisition account to an offshore bank.
An acute lack of offense is precisely what makes the Bruins so vulnerable when the officials turn in their nightly two or three bad calls. The worst of the bunch in Game No. 65 came with 15:32 gone in the middle period - the horrendous middle period - when Eric Weinrich was whistled off for cross-checking Jason Woolley. Woolley already was falling when Weinrich barely brushed against him. Outcome: Weinrich in the box, serving out his sentence, when Woolley connected 16 seconds later for the 2-0 lead.
''I don't know if it's because I'm complaining about [the officiating],'' mused Keenan, ''and they pass it on to each other. It could very well be.''
Backed with the 2-0 lead, Buffalo goalie Dominik Hasek all but posted the ''Game Over'' sign over his cage. The Dominator may not be having one of his dominating seasons, but Boston's disappearing act in the middle period didn't require the Czech star's ''A'' game.
Strong offensive teams rarely are victimized by referees. When you're up by 3-4 goals, a bad call resulting in a power-play goal is just another line in the scoring summary. But for the goal-challenged Bruins, bad calls these days are writing their ongoing obituary. Once beyond the Sergei Samsonov-Jason Allison-Bill Guerin trio, not much happens for the Bruins at even strength. Keenan tried everyone but the Score-O winner on Joe Thornton's wings last night, but it looks as though the franchise-center-in-waiting will have to keep on waiting and waiting for a Mr. Right or Mr. Left to show up in his life.
After surviving Boston's first-period post-Amtrak rush (an 11-4 Bruins shot advantage), the Sabres began to put it away when Curtis Brown mashed in a doorstep backhander at the right post off a Chris Taylor feed at 14:17. Only 1:31 later, with the bogus Weinrich cross-check setting up a four-on-three advantage, Woolley wristed in the 2-0 lead from the inner edge of the right circle.
The Bruins chopped it down to 2-1 with Allison's tip of a Guerin shot on a power play with 8:51 remaining, but Vladimir Tsyplakov iced it with an empty-netter.
''When you get that many shots on net, you want to get one or two goals,'' said Kyle McLaren, thinking back to the first period. ''But we failed to capitalize on our chances. It was a golden opportunity to get 2 points, and we didn't do it. It was a little disheartening to come out and play the way we did in the second period.''
