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SENATORS 3, BRUINS 2 Bruins caught at a disadvantage [ Game summary ] By Nancy Marrapese-Burrell, Globe Staff, 4/2/2003
More telling than the 3-2 final score, which extended Boston's winless streak to four games (0-2-2-0), were the 55 minutes in penalties that resulted in 13 power plays for the Eastern Conference's best club. Consider that the Senators spent a total of 21 minutes 4 seconds on the man advantage (sometimes two-man), or more than a third of the contest. Not a very pretty picture. The power plays were a season-high for a Boston opponent. Of the 55 penalty minutes, defenseman Sean O'Donnell - normally one of the most composed members of the blue line corps - accounted for 30. In 68 games prior to this one, O'Donnell had a total of only 46 penalty minutes. If there was a silver lining, it was that goaltender Tim Thomas, making his third NHL start and first since October, turned in a strong performance with 28 saves. Of the three goals he allowed, two came on the power play. The Bruins had a good first period, despite generating only five shots. Martin Lapointe gave Boston a 1-0 lead at 2:34 but Marian Hossa tied it on his first of two at 9:55 during a man advantage. Glen Murray gave the Bruins the lead back when he converted a two-on-one feed from center Joe Thornton at 10:31, his career-high 42d tally of the season. The lead lasted until 18:31 when Hossa struck again. All heck broke loose in the second period, with Martin Havlat putting his team up for good at 3:28 during a power play. Eleven times in the final 40 minutes the Bruins had to kill off a shorthanded situation, effectively taking themselves right out of the competition. ''I hope it's just an isolated game, because you can't win playoff games playing like that,'' said Lapointe. ''When it's 3-2 like that, you've got to be disciplined and we didn't do that tonight. When they go after Joe or [Murray], we have to do the same thing but in a smart way. ''I like hacking and whacking and playing tough, but if you want to win the Stanley Cup, you can't be playing like that.'' Lapointe knows whereof he speaks. He won back-to-back Stanley Cups in 1997 and '98 with Detroit, and the Red Wings had memorable battles with the Colorado Avalanche those years. ''It's great to hate the other team, but when you look back, Colorado and Detroit, both teams knew what was at stake and nobody would take any stupid penalties and it was hard-nosed hockey,'' said Lapointe. ''Get the hit, whack, and get out of there. That's what's good about the game of hockey, you can do that. But you can't just stand there and keep whacking and whacking until you get called on it.'' O'Donnell said he normally doesn't get angry at the officiating but his frustration just boiled over. ''Things just got carried away,'' said O'Donnell. ''Both teams were pretty undisciplined. It wasn't the smartest game by either team.'' Thomas had no inkling what he was in for. ''I was surprised, but you just get in the middle of it and you've just got to bear down and go to work and figure out what was going wrong later,'' he said. ''The team wasn't happy with the penalties themselves, but from a personal standpoint, I was happy with my penalty killers. I think they did an awesome job. That's a positive you can take away from that.''
This story ran on page F1 of the Boston Globe on 4/2/2003.
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ANATA, Ontario - Maybe it was an April Fools' joke. How else to explain the Bruins' astonishing meltdown against the Ottawa Senators last night?