Loss combined with Hurricanes' win ends Boston's playoff pursuit

[ Game summary ]

By Nancy Marrapese-Burrell, Globe Staff, 4/7/2001

AST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - When yesterday began, the Bruins had hope. It wasn't a lot, but if ...

As the Bruins were getting smoked by the defending Stanley Cup champion Devils, 5-2, the out-of-town scoreboard told of Carolina's win over Atlanta. Before the team's plane returned home, Toronto had finished off Chicago - and with it the Bruins' postseason possibilities.

Tonight's season finale against the visiting New York Islanders became nothing more than the first exhibition game of next season.

The reality is the Bruins missed the playoffs for the second year in a row because they lost to inferior opponents (four times to Atlanta, three times to Florida, and once each to Minnesota, Columbus, and Nashville).

When they had No. 1 goalie Byron Dafoe in the net, they had a golden opportunity.

Without him, they were practically sunk before they started.

''The assimilation of the team took quite a bit of time because of the injury factor,'' said Bruins coach Mike Keenan. ''The fact is, we couldn't get the group together and our most critical area was hurt, and that was in goaltending.''

Keenan's words are a compliment to Dafoe. He was a helpless spectator for 34 games because of injuries, but he backstopped Boston to a 7-3-2 run in its last 12 contests. ''Not to toot my own horn, but if I was healthy all year, I don't think we'd be having this problem right now,'' said Dafoe. ''Not a knock on any other goaltenders, it's just that when you're a team and you have a starting goaltender, that's who you rely on and there's a certain amount that's expected from me.

''This team is better than the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Carolina Hurricanes, I think. I think we've played like it the last 12 games.''

Dafoe said he was disappointed at the way his team played against the Devils last night. ''We played so well for so long, I don't know why the effort wasn't there tonight,'' said Dafoe. ''I guess we left ourselves no room for error and that's our fault if you look back to the first half of the year.

''We played extremely well the last 12 games or so. Once in a while, you're not going to have it and we didn't have it tonight and we had to have it. I don't know if it was so much us not playing well or them playing unbeliev able, but they looked like the defending Stanley Cup champion and they looked like they were in prime shape.

''They've got everything.''

Said Keenan of the Devils' remarkable display of stifling defense and opportunistic goal scoring: ''We didn't give them much of a test but they played with a lot of confidence even without their top goal scorer [Alexander Mogilny, who was out with a groin injury].

''We couldn't overcome the fear of failure. I guess that can happen when you're up against a team like Jersey. They came out with a tremendous amount of authority and that sent us reeling and we never recovered.''

New Jersey took a 2-0 lead into the first intermission after outshooting Boston, 12-2. The Bruins looked nervous and played as if they were wearing straitjackets.

John Madden and Patrik Elias scored eight seconds apart - at 16:31 and 16:39, respectively - to set a franchise record for quickest consecutive goals.

Keenan pulled Dafoe, even though he had made several spectacular stops earlier, in favor of Peter Skudra. Dafoe returned at 17:52.

In the short time he was off the ice, a skirmish erupted at 17:42 when Andrei Nazarov got into it with Scott Stevens. After Jason Allison was hit by enforcer Jim McKenzie, McKenzie went after Nazarov for hitting Stevens. Allison then tried to pull McKenzie off Nazarov.

The Bruins came back on the power play with center Joe Thornton potting his 35th of the season at 4:41 of the second period. But only 26 seconds later, the Devils sucked all the momentum away again when they regained their two-goal lead on a Jason Arnott strike at 5:07.

In the third period, Petr Sykora made it 4-1 and Elias reached the 40-goal milestone at 9:55 during a power play.

Mikko Eloranta closed the gap to within 5-2 at 17:52, but the game was over long before then and the season ended not long after that. ''It's incredibly frustrating,'' said Brian Rolston. ''We all wanted to be in the playoffs here. It's very disheartening. This whole month has been a whirlwind where we've had to win every game. It's that simple and we almost did it.''

This story ran on page 07 of the Boston Globe on 4/7/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.