The Bruins won only one game at TD Garden during their seven-game playoff series.
View full sizeBoston Bruins coach Claude Julien walks onto the ice as his players line up for team handshakes after the Bruins lost to the Washington Capitals 2-1 in overtime in Game 7.BOSTON - Last season, home-ice advantage was the difference-maker for the Boston Bruins during their Stanley Cup run.
Boston was 10-3 at TD Garden despite dropping its first two games to the Montreal Canadiens in the Eastern Conference quarterfinals.
It's a goal for any team to gain home-ice in the playoffs, but this year it didn't have the same effect.
The Bruins won only once in their own building, which led to their elimination by the Washington Capitals who won Game 7 2-1 winners in overtime to advance to the Eastern Conference semifinals.
"You fight all season long to get that home-ice advantage and you look at this series and even in the regular season they won five out of the six on our ice so that's another thing that's disappointing," Bruins forward Milan Lucic said. "Last year's during the playoffs we were really good on home ice."
The Capitals didn't seem to be scared of 17,565 screaming Boston fans who are known around the league as being the loudest.
Even rookie goalie Braden Holtby wasn't intimidated by the hecklers.
"If I got rattled I wouldn't be here right now," Holtby said who has a 2.00 goals-against average and .940 save percentage. "It's one of those things that I've learned in order to get to this level. I've had to work on it and get better at it and obviously it has paid off."
Washington didn't have problem either during the regular season at the Garden as it won 4-3 and 3-2 in a shootout on March 10 and 29 respectively.
"We talked about that after, between the coaches," Bruins coach Claude Julien said. "We lost three of the four games at home and you can't expect win a series when that happens."
No one thought that would be the case after Game 1 where Bruins center Chris Kelly struck with the game-winner in overtime, but after they dropped Games 2 and 5 at home, something didn't feel right.
Like last year's playoffs, the Bruins did not have the answer on the power play and finished 2 for 23 for the series. The Capitals were 3 for 19 and all three goals came in separate games. In two of those, they came out victorious.
"It's obvious that we had to better on the power play and we didn't do that and at least create some momentum out of it and I don't think we did that (Wednesday)," Bruins center Patrice Bergeron said.
Now the Bruins will be able to think about all of that for the next four months as their season is over, a bit sooner than they would have liked.