Here's something that doesn't happen often in this town: I'm writing about a Boston loss and I'm not particularly angry.
The Bruins fell 2–1 in Carolina Tuesday. Their eight-game points streak is over. The Hurricanes were the better team, and there's no reason to pretend otherwise. Boston managed 15 shots on goal. Carolina had 30. The Bruins produced exactly two shots in the second period. If you want to look only at the final score and say it was a coin flip, that's not what the game looked like on the stat sheet.
I'm still impressed by this team. Both things can be true.
Swayman gave them every chance
Jeremy Swayman made 28 saves on 30 shots, a .933 save percentage, and kept Boston in a game where it wasn't generating enough offense to help him. He was sharp when the ice tilted the wrong way, which was often.
The Bruins actually struck first. At 1:31 of the opening period, David Pastrnak slipped a backhand pass to Elias Lindholm, who found Pavel Zacha for a power-play goal. Clean passing, a hard move to the net, a quick finish. Exactly how you want to start on the road against a good team.
Then came the kind of mistake a young group will make. Nikolaj Ehlers pressured Frederic Brunet below the goal line and stole the puck. He found Jackson Blake, who tied it with 52 seconds left in the first. You can't hand Carolina that opportunity. You also can't pretend a young defenseman is finished developing because an aggressive forecheck caught him.
The deciding sequence was even tougher. Matthew Poitras nearly put Boston ahead when his backhand hit the post with an open net in front of him. Moments later, Sebastian Aho finished a rush at 10:19 of the third. That's how fast a close game swings against an opponent that knows what it's doing.
The encouraging part isn't the score
Boston is 9–3–1 after 13 games. This wasn't a soft opponent ruining a pleasant little streak. Carolina came in among the East's best teams and left at 10–2–2. The Bruins killed all four Carolina power plays. Swayman was excellent. And I continue to like the investment in young players such as James Hagens, Fraser Minten and Poitras, whose mistakes and flashes are part of the same development curve.
There's an energy to this group I didn't expect to see this soon. They compete. They have useful players whose best hockey may still be ahead of them. Under Marco Sturm, they've given us reasons to watch the growth instead of just counting down the mistakes.
But let's not hand out participation trophies. One goal on 15 shots is not enough. Boston went 1-for-5 on the power play, with Carolina killing two opportunities in the last five minutes. When the opponent takes away your time and space, you need another way to generate chances. Pastrnak can't be expected to invent an entire offense by himself every night, and the young forwards can't learn to play through pressure if every shift ends in a dump-out.
That's the next test: maintaining possession, breaking a hard forecheck, getting pucks and bodies to the interior and finding a second way to score when the first one isn't there.
I've been tough on the Celtics and Patriots because their performances haven't justified the nonstop applause. The Bruins have earned a little more patience, not because they won Tuesday, but because the bigger picture is promising and the shortcomings are specific enough to fix.
There's no shame in losing a close road game to Carolina. There is a lesson in being outshot two to one.
Take it. Then show us something Thursday in St. Louis.