The Boston Bruins certainly aren’t the team Bruin’s fans are used to seeing these days.

The Bruins lost 3-2  to the Chicago Blackhawks at home Thursday night, which gives them a record of 2-5-1 in their last eight games. Getting Captain Zdeno Chara back after missing 19 games didn’t provide the Bruins with the boost they needed to win the game.

In fact, it actually ended up hurting them. Chara turned the puck over twice and made several poor decisions in the defensive end. However, it won’t take him long to bounce back and start scoring goals. The Blackhawks used their speed affectively to create chances, win puck battles and score goals. As a result, Chicago was able to jump to a three goal lead early and hold on for win.

Scoring Draught Continues

The Bruins have been plagued with injuries for most of the start of the season. The team’s top scorer David Krejci has been in and out of the lineup and the other forwards have failed to step up in his absence. Milan Lucic, a player who finished 4th in points last year for the Bruins, has just five goals and nine assists to his name so far this season. Loui Eriksson has just four goals and 10 assists so far.

Clearly, these guys are missing Krejci. The organization tried to bring in a veteran presence in Simon Gagne as a replacement for Jarome Iginla. But that move has yet to really benefit the Bruins and provide the spark required to boost some of the younger players.

Fortunately for the Bruins, the Christmas break is almost here. That will hopefully give Krejci enough time to fully recover and get back to helping his team win.

The Bruins have loads of young, talented players. Seth Griffin and Reilly Smith have done a wonderful job proving their worth so far. The two forwards have combined for 22 points so far this season and continue to improve. But this team needs to find some more consistent secondary scoring options if they hope to catch up with some of the higher ranked teams in the Eastern Conference.

Changes may be coming

That being said, the Bruins will likely be one of the more active teams when the trade deadline comes around. The organization dropped veteran defenseman Johnny Boychuk at the beginning of the year in order to create some cap space. Now they can look to trade for a consistent, secondary scoring option if things don’t improve.

At present, Gregory Campbell and Daniel Paille may be players the organization is hoping to use as bargaining chips in order to strengthen the team for the rest of the season. I can’t wait to see how this Bruins team will do against the Ottawa Senators on Saturday.