Bruins face uncertain future after season-ending Game 5 loss to Lightning

For most of the postgame press conference, David Krejci kept his head down, his eyes hidden by the brim of his cap. He seemed emotional, disappointed, wrung out by the intensity of losing Game 5 to the Tampa Bay Lightning, 3-2 in double overtime on Monday, a game that ended the Boston Bruins' chances of making a return to the Stanley Cup Final.

But for the Bruins, whose core has been together for a decade, including three trips to the Stanley Cup Final and a win against the Vancouver Canucks for the 2011 championship, it's unclear how many more chances they might have.
Which made this loss in the Eastern Conference Second Round all the more difficult to take.
"It just kind of hit me after the game that the core group, a few of us, we have one or two, three years left," said Krejci, who scored the game-tying goal with 2:33 remaining in the third period. "With the pandemic going on, you never know what's going to happen. So, I just got a little sad right now. At the same time, I don't regret coming into this bubble and fighting for the Stanley Cup.
"If I would have to do it again, I would."
The Bruins left the ice at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, the East hub city, not knowing whether this will be the end for that core, five of whom won the Cup together nine years ago. They skated off not knowing whether their window to win again was closing or has closed already.
Their captain, Zdeno Chara, is 43 and a pending unrestricted free agent. Their top players are inching into their mid-30s. The future is unclear.
Which is why it was so disappointing to the Bruins that their run in the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs ended in the second round. Because this wasn't how this all had been supposed to go.
And they thought, during Game 5, that maybe they could stave off time for just a little bit longer. The Bruins, on the brink of losing in regulation, had their season extended by Krejci. They would last 36:43 more, until Victor Hedman ended their season with a goal at 14:10 of the second overtime.
"It's very disappointing finish," Boston forward Brad Marchand said. "We had a great year. Obviously it's been a very different playoff schedule. There was a lot of time off, but we have a hell of a team. And we expected better out of this year.
"The way things were rolling throughout the season, we thought we were going to go all the way."

They came in with a mantra of "unfinished business," from their loss in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final last season to the St. Louis Blues and from the regular season, when they won the Presidents' Trophy with a .714 points percentage.
That business, however, remains unfinished.
The Bruins ran into issues right from the start of the NHL Return to Play. Their top scorer, David Pastrnak, who tied for the NHL lead with 48 goals in the regular season, missed all but one day of training camp, as did their biggest pickup at the 2020 NHL Trade Deadline, forward Ondrej Kase, each due to quarantine restrictions. They fell from the No. 1 to the No. 4 seed in the round-robin portion of the Stanley Cup Qualifiers, and Tuukka Rask, the starting goalie who is a finalist for the Vezina Trophy for the top goalie in the NHL, opted out to go home for a family emergency.
They got down 3-1 in their series against the Lightning, and down 1-0 at 4:21 in the second period of Game 5, but they did all they could to come back. Goalie Jaroslav Halak had none of the soft goals or miscues that happened earlier in the playoffs. As coach Bruce Cassidy said, "He stopped everything that he literally could." The Bruins created chance after chance, tying the game first on Pastrnak's goal at 12:38 of the second and then on Krejci's.
They just couldn't get the final goal, an issue that plagued them throughout the playoffs.
"We're disappointed," Cassidy said. "We thought we were the better team tonight and we wanted to play on. We put ourselves in a hole, obviously, but we felt we played well enough to win tonight, get it to Game 6 and then see what happens from there."
Instead, they will be packing their bags, and contemplating their futures.
That includes Chara, the oldest player in the NHL and the captain of the Bruins since 2006-07. Chara had the primary assist on the game-tying goal, perhaps the final point of a career that could land him in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
"I haven't made that decision," Chara said about whether he would return. "I obviously just finished the game and I'm going to be open-minded."
But whether he returns or not, it's clear the Bruins were contemplating their futures after it was over Monday. Many of them know that there aren't many chances left.
"It's tough," Marchand said. "You never know how many opportunities you're going to have to win a Cup. We never know if we're going to be back in the Finals again, or even in playoffs again. So every opportunity missed -- it hurts."