The Bruins could have, and probably should have, locked up a playoff spot with a win over the Lightning Saturday afternoon at TD Garden.
Some four hours later, could have and should have turned into a a done deal.
After losing to the Lightning at the Garden, 2-1, the Bruins qualified for the playoffs when the Red Wings lost to New Jersey, 5-3, thus guaranteeing the Bruins a spot.
The Bruins, who will play Sunday evening in Columbus, clinched a wild-card spot for the start of the playoffs next weekend. It remains to be seen who the Bruins will oppose in the best-of-seven Round 1 series — dates and times yet to be announced.
With the wild-card invite in hand, they will open on the road, be it in the city of the Atlantic or Metropolitan Division winner. Carolina has clinched the Metro.
After Morgan Geekie’s 38th goal of the season provided a 1-0 lead into the third period, the Bruins made too many boo-boos, and the Lightning cashed in with goals by Brandon Hagel (at 6:37) and Emil Lilleberg (1:35 left in regulation) to drop the Bruins to 43-27-10.
By afternoon’s end, the Bruins had slipped from the first to the second wild-card spot in the East, their ticket to the playoffs still not punched.
“We had ‘em … and when you get scored against, it felt a little bit different,” acknowledged coach Marco Sturm, his club now six games removed from its last regulation win (March 31). “More pressure, I would say.”
A win, be it in regulation or OT, would have done the job. An overtime loss would have added a point (to 97) to their season stash. All of that vaporized, though, when Brayden Point stripped Casey Mittelstadt of the puck deep in the Bruins end, then fired the shot that the alert Lilleberg cashed at Jeremy Swayman’s doorstep for the winner.
“It’s a good team over there,” noted Sturm. “I felt like exactly what happened tonight happened in the past against them. Those little moments, if you look at those two goals against — that hurts. We’ve got to move on. Unfortunately that cost us the game.”
Swayman, poised to collect his 18th shutout, instead finished with 22 saves and left with the L. He has failed to win in his last four starts (0-2-1). Sturm was of the mind, prior to the late afternoon charter out of Bedford/Hanscom, that Swayman would be his tender of choice again Sunday.
With a playoff spot clinched, look for Sturm to go with Joonas Korpisalo in net.
The test, the Bruins’ biggest challenge of the season, would have been to recover from the haymaker dealt them once again by the Lightning. Despite landing only a dozen shots in the first two periods, they were in position to chisel out a win around Geekie’s goal — a breakaway snipe sparked by Charlie McAvoy’s 50th assist of the season.
Then the Garden’s roof tiles began to peel away with Hagel’s goal — shortly after a penalty to Elias Lindholm expired — and then it collapsed when Point stripped Mittelstadt along the right half-wall.
Only 95 seconds away from securing a precious point, the mandate there was to protect the puck, either by keeping it tight to the board or by doing what it took to make a play out of the zone. Opportunity lost. Game lost. The little things can add up to big losses.
“We are in a good spot, we’ve put ourselves in [it] for the year,” noted a realistic David Pastrnak, who remains 1 point short of his fourth consecutive 100-point season. “At the same time, we’ve lost five in a row. We have to get our game back. Time is ticking.
“We’ve been good closing out games all year. We just have to get back at it.”
The Bruins fell to 31-2-4 when leading at the 40:00 mark. Both regulation losses when leading after two periods have been to Tampa (including the previous Saturday).
In their recent visit to Columbus, they were down, 3-0, after two periods and rallied for a win. McAvoy had a huge game at Nationwide Arena. The Bruins need that kind of effort from someone.
“I’m going to remind them what happened the last time we were in Columbus,” noted Sturm. “We got absolutely dominated in the first period and it took us a long time to get it back — and we can’t do that [again]. I’ll address that for sure. Forget about going into the playoffs or not. We are going to take it period by period … build on what we did well today … and we just got to find a win.”
Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at kevin.dupont@globe.com.