Bruins Aware Of Missed ‘Break’ In Gutting Loss To Golden Knights

The Bruins enter the two-week 4 Nations Face-Off break out of a playoff spot after two straight losses to the New York Rangers and Vegas Golden Knights.

Boston held a 3-2 lead heading into the final frame against Vegas but couldn’t hold the lead — especially with Pavel Zacha in the penalty box for slashing Pavel Dorofeyev.

The Bruins caught a break. Dorofeyev’s go-ahead goal with 1:41 left in regulation was disallowed after it was determined that Mark Stone interfered with Jeremy Swayman. Less than one minute later, Tomas Hertl scored his goal to complete Vegas’ come-from-behind win.

“We got a break, right?” Bruins interim head coach Joe Sacco told reporters, per team-provided audio. ” … We have to kill that (penalty) after because that’s a huge momentum shift when they disallowed the goal. We just have to do the job and kill that. We should have gotten it done and we didn’t.”

Boston was in a similar position on the other end of the ice earlier in the period. With the game knotted 3-3, Nikita Zadorov appeared to have tallied his second goal of the game for a Bruins 4-3 lead, but Brad Marchand made contact with Ilya Samsonov, and the score came off the board.

“Yeah, I’m disappointed,” Marchand said after the loss, per team-provided audio. “They’re one of the top three power plays in the league. They don’t need much. It was disappointing. We got that (no-goal) call, but we couldn’t finish it off.”

The Black and Gold entered Wednesday’s game with the Rangers 16-0-4 this season when entering the third period with a lead. They’ve now lost back-to-back games in regulation when entering the third period with a lead.

Boston enters the break at 27-24-6 overall, with 25 games remaining in the season. If the Bruins intend to make a push down the stretch, they will have to wait until Feb. 22, when they host the Anaheim Ducks at TD Garden.