Photo: NESN.com

The Bruins recent drought in goals is nothing new this season for the boys in Black-and-Gold.

Up until the final minute of last night’s 2-1 loss, Boston had gone nearly seven playoff periods without hitting the back of the net. Akin to the regular season where the Bruins finished dead-last in the NHL with 2.39 goals-for per game, their anemic sniping-sticks have come out of hibernation once again.

Along with the recent riposte of struggles to light the lamp comes many excuses and finger pointing to why. Some people yelp in the direction of non-contributing players such as Michael Ryder and Blake Wheeler, while others pull the “injuries” excuse. Some even accost the Bruins’ management for not bringing in a goal-scorer on the NHL’s trade deadline.

The latter of excuses cannot be further from the true reason.

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The Bruins lackluster effort against the Philadelphia Flyers tonight was evident all night long. Lack of desperation and energy was replaced with carelessness and frustration as they dropped this possible series-ending Game 5 at the TD Garden with a 4-0 embarrassing shutout.

In the early stages of the second period, Flyers’ net-minder Brian Boucher went down-and-out with an apparent left leg injury. Boucher, although stellar against the Devils in Round One — .925 save-percentage — has come back to earth since facing the Bruins in Round Two — 15 goals-against on 128 shots.883 save-percentage.

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Daniel Carcillo has made his NHL career beeing a tough guy, an antagonist, and a player who easily gets under the skin of his opponents. In fact, over the last three seasons, Carcillo has been amongst the league leaders in penalty minutes – 4th in the NHL this past regular season with 207 PIM; 1st in 2008-09 season with 254 PIM between Phoenix and Philly; and 1st in the 2007-08 season with 324 PIM with the ‘Yotes.

So having played in his fourth NHL season, the 25-year-old has been through virtually any and all physical altercations that the league’s best have thrown at him.

Except for an opponent biting him.

“Last time I have been bit was in grade school.” Carcillo said to the media post game tonight. “It is not a good feeling it is pretty cowardly.”

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Thanks to a lifelong rival and arch-nemesis, Montreal Canadiens, the Boston Bruins can now prepare for their next round  opponents: Winter Classic and Conference foes, Philadelphia Flyers.

The No. 6 seed Bruins now have home-ice advantage throughout this series against the Flyers; beginning on Saturday at 12:30 p.m. EST at the TD Garden.

The Bruins HAVE had some luck against the Flyers during the regular season, including the Jan. 1 Winter Classic. Boston posted a 2-1-1 record against Philly and outscored them 11-9 over those four contests.

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The “giveaway” and “takeaway” stats in the NHL are tricky. NHL monitors in certain cities have different criteria for what merits a giveaway or a takeaway — all depending on the individual. Some stingy. Some biased.

Last night against Buffalo, the Bruins were accounted for six giveaways in their 3-2 loss to the Sabres. But that number is certainly higher as they turned the puck over like a rotating turnstile throughout the 60 minute contest.

Before we get into the revolving door issues here; kudos must be in order to the Sabres team for their relentless forechecking, keeping the puck in the Bruins’ zone, and clogging up the neutral zone.

But the end result: Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas gets pulled for the sixth time this season after allowing three goals on 14 Sabres shots in 26:08, as Boston fails to gain two much-needed-points in the Eastern Conference standings.

“We got our sticks in a good place quite a few times.  If you defend and you’re in the right spot and you try to squeeze some pucks through you can get those opportunities.” said Buffalo’s head coach Lindy Ruff. “I thought tonight was one of those cases where there was quite a few that went our way.”

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It seems with every passing game we’ve been saying; “That was Milan Lucic’s best outing all season.” And over the past week — four games in all — No. 17 seems to be getting better and better, while looking like the Milan Lucic of last year’s playoffs.

Sidelined with a high-ankle sprain sustained back on Nov. 27 against the Minnesota Wild, Lucic missed the following 18 contests while watching his team from the Injured Reserve list — his second stint on the list. Even if the ankle-injury is still lingering today, it appears as if the pain is bearable enough to log more ice time while becoming an important cog in the Bruins’ new power play plan of attack. Lucic — registering one power play assist today, while creating traffic and a screen on the B’s third power play goal — was lined with David Krejci and Blake Wheeler up front, and Zdeno Chara and Johnny Boychuk on the blue-line.

“Yeah I think it kind of goes hand-in-hand. We needed some net-front presence and some good net-front presence. He’s one of those guys.” said head coach Claude Julien after the Bruins’ 5-0 blanking of the Clagary Flames this afternoon.

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With an NHL career-high of 23-points in a single season, Steve Begin was not signed by the Boston Bruins to be an offensive threat. In fact, the Trois-Rivieres, QC, Canada native has been under the microscope as of late in the Boston media — especially some afternoon talk show hosts — questioning his role on this team while asking, “what have you done for me lately”.

No, he was not brought in with the expectations of being a 20-goal scorer to help replace the loss of Phil Kessel’s 36 goals. No, he was not signed to be the chippy weasel he once was on Montreal. No, he was acquired to be a fourth-line center and to carry out fourth-line duties: create energy, finish checks, play hard, help enforce and police, etc.

However, Begin went on a scoreless drought that dated back to last calendar year as it ran as many games deep as the number on his jersey. The 31-year-old Begin hadn’t registered a point since he hit the back of the net on Dec. 30, 2009 — 27 games ago — against the Atlanta Thrashers.

Fast forward 27 games to last night’s highly anticipated match-up, and the B’s fourth-line center snapped the point-less streak by scoring Boston’s fourth goal of the game — and his fourth of the season — against the very team in which he scored his third: the Atlanta Thrashers.

Begin finished the night with 1-0-1, plus-1 rating, and three shots on goal on the score sheet.  Plus, he earned team high’s with six hits and winning 70-percent on the face-offs against the Blue Crew. He was relentless when playing the body, even mixing it up a bit against Thrashers’ bruiser Eric Boulton late in the game — who fought Bruins’ policeman Shawn Thornton earlier in the first period — but did not back down.

Vladimir Sobotka — the Bruins’ 5′10″ 180 lb. third-line center — played just 0:51 of one shift last night before leaving with a head-injury sustained from a thunderous hit from Atlanta’s 6′4″ 255 lb. Evgeny Artukhin. Begin — along with David Krejci and Patrice Bergeron — stepped-up with extra minutes and filled the void of their ailing teammate, logging 15:39 of total ice time: the most playing time Begin has seen since in 16 games.

However Begin’s contributions run further than just scoring a goal last night. In fact, No. 27 shined in Sunday’s 2-1 win over the New York Rangers as well — answering the bell with Brandon Prust just 2:40 into the first period after a sweet open-ice hit. His physical, and overall, play has elevated during the Bruins’ most desperate time of need.

“No better time than now.” said head coach Claude Julien to the media when asked about Begin’s physical presence after last night’s win against Atlanta.

If Begin can produce with this type of play over the next 10 games and into the playoffs, then we shouldn’t have to question why Begin was brought into Boston in the first place.

Remember when Mike Tyson was on top of the boxing world some 20-25 years ago? Iron Mike ran through his competition like a hot knife through butter en route to capturing the IBF/WBA/WBC heavyweight titles during the mid-80’s.

He was on his way to the best of all time. The greatest ever. His name, along with his destructive style, came along with the hoopla that people ate-up and with every schedule bout — regardless of the pay-per-view cost.

And of course, we would dish-out the criminal fees to HBO to watch Iron Mike nearly decapitate his latest victim. After all, months had passed since the Champ fought. The promoters did such a good job of hyping it up — especially during the weigh-ins — that we couldn’t be “that guy” who went to work [or school, in my case] the next day without watching it and talking about it.

But with every Mike Tyson fight, along with the hype, came one sure outcome: It was usually over by the fist round.

Sure, his opponent may have danced around for a few moments. Heck, he may have even landed a few jabs to wake-up the beast. But one thing remained the same for many, many years. Mike won effortlessly, and he won quickly.

The same thing could be said about the Boston Bruins last night at the TD Garden. Losing — and losing bad — to the reigning Stanley Cup Champions, Pittsburgh Penguins, 3-0.

But the score does the debacle no justice. This game was never really close. Akin to a Mike Tyson fight in the 80’s, it had the anticipation and the makings to be one of the greatest events in a long time. [read more -->]

On Feb. 26, 2004, Flyers’ leading scorer Mark Recchi got his lip busted and stitched from a two-handed swinging stick to the kisser by Ottawa Senators’ forward, Martin Havlat. The right-wing Havlat would receive a two-game suspension for his cowardly act; while Recchi, his teammates, and coaches awaited their next meeting for retaliation.

`He’s a reckless player and someday someone is going to make him eat his lunch,” said Flyers’ head coach at the time, Ken Hitchcock. “He’s going to get it someday, and it’s going to be harsh.

This is something in my opinion that the players should take care of.” added Hitchcock.

“He two-handed me across the face.” said the fat-lipped Recchi after the game. “It might not come from our team, it might come from some other team, but he will because he’s cheap and he does stupid stuff like that. He’d better learn to protect himself.”

On Mar. 5, 2004 – one-week after the Halvat cheapshot – Philly hosted Ottawa as the two top-teams in their respective Divisions’ squared-off. Nonetheless, the bad blood carried over and escalated into an NHL-record-breaking 419 penalty minutes in the 60-minute contest. Five separate brawls took place – goaltenders included – and the ejections of 16 different players occurred within the final two-minutes of the third period. (The old NHL record for most penalty minutes in a game was 406, set by the Minnesota North Stars and Boston Bruins in 1981)

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Although being dead last in the NHL with an average of 2.32 goals-for per game — and fourth in goals-against — one of the issues that needed to be addressed for this Bruins team was on the blue-line. And in the wake of this NHL trade deadline, this became evermore apparent for Boston.

After being acquired from Florida some 30 hours prior to game time, Dennis Seidenberg made his Bruins debut with a stellar performance on the blue-line.

“I thought he played great.” said Johnny Boychuk, who scored the Bruins’ second goal of the game. “…he is a great player and even though he is playing his off side, I think he is used to it.  He didn’t look out of place at all over there.”

Seidenberg jumped in, with very little practice with his new teammates, and logged the most even-strength ice time of any player for the Black-and-Gold last night with 20:34. The 6′1″ 210 lb. Seidenberg finished with 25:35 of total ice time, while adding nearly three minutes of of power play time, and over two minutes on the short hand. Exactly what was expected of him and almost the exact same scenario as his tenure in Florida. So it was no real surprise that the veteran joined his new squad with relative ease, despite the lack of on-ice time prior to the 3-2 shootout victory over the Maple Leafs last night.

“Well, the main thing is you just got to keep it simple.” Seidenberg said after his winning debut in a Bruins uniform, and just one optional morning skate under his belt with the team. “You communicate as much as possible with your partner and try to talk to the other guys as much as possible on the ice and as long as you do that, you’re just fine.”

Last night, Seidenberg was paired with Zdeno Chara for the majority of the contest against the Division rival Maple Leafs. The two defensemen looked as if they instantly clicked in play, and in communication.

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