McQuaid: Time to put Game 4 in the past

Boston Bruins defenseman Adam McQuaid is already a veteran of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, including winning a Stanley Cup title with the Bruins in 2011 and approaching 50 postseason games for his career before his 27th birthday.

This postseason, McQuaid, 26, has been a staple of Boston's third defensive pairing, providing a shut-down presence for Claude Julien. In the Eastern Conference Final, McQuaid scored the series-winning goal in a stunning four-game sweep of the Pittsburgh Penguins.

McQuaid has been gracious enough to agree to keep a player blog that will appear on NHL.com throughout the Stanley Cup Final.

In his latest installment, McQuaid talks about the tough 6-5 overtime loss to the Chicago Blackhawks on Wednesday at TD Garden, a game that saw Boston commit several mistakes in the defensive zone but find an answer each time until Brent Seabrook scored midway through the first OT.

Game 4 was very uncharacteristic of our team. We made some bad decisions at times, but we found a way to continually get back in the game. But we know we need to be better than we were tonight, definitely need to be a lot more consistent. I've been saying it all along. When we win or when we lose, you let it sink in a little bit and then Thursday you get refocused and back to work and get ready for Game 5.

Now there are two days off before Game 5, but either way, it's OK. I think we are excited to play every game now. It doesn't matter whether you play the next day or have two days -- it's the same for both teams. The way the schedule is, we get a couple days and we'll try to use them the best we can and make sure we are ready to go for the next game.

There was a lot of emotional moments in that game, but you try to keep things on an even keel. You try not to get too high when things are going good or too low when maybe things aren't going your way. It was definitely a back-and-forth type game, a real roller coaster. You try to just approach each shift with the same mindset and focus on the things that you need to do.

This team has been through quite a bit, a lot of experiences -- both good and bad. Like I said, I think tomorrow is a new day. We'll go over some things we need to improve on and look at the areas we weren't very good in and make sure we improve on those. We'll get re-focused, re-energized and be ready. It's going to be another huge game and we have to make sure all our focus and energy is toward having a good game next game.

There's not a ton to take out of that we scored five goals. We look more at that we kept fighting back and doing what we needed to do to give ourselves a chance to get the game into overtime. Anything can happen in OT. I think we would like to be a little sharper defensively, that has always been the area we've taken a lot of pride in. We did what we had to to give ourselves a chance. In that respect, it was good to score like we did, to score as many as we did, but when you are allowing that many against, it's not very good.

Thursday is a new day. Talk to you then.