Tuukka was not there in time.

Christopher Higgins cut to the net and tucked the puck past Tuukka Rask with 1:29 remaining in the third period, lifting the Rangers to a 3-2 victory over the Bruins Monday night. (Recap.)

Higgins’ goal spoiled a late comeback by the Bruins, who had yielded a power-play goal to Ales Kotalik in the first and an even-strength goal to Erik Christensen in the second before rallying to tie the game on goals by Matt Hunwick and Blake Wheeler in the final minutes of the third period.

The more pressing concern for the B’s however, is the status of Patrice Bergeron. The Bruins’ leading scorer appeared to injure his right hand or wrist when hit by a Dennis Wideman shot in the second period.

Bergeron went for X-rays and did not return. He will travel to Boston to be examined by doctors and will not accompany the Bruins to Ottawa for Tuesday’s contest against the Senators.

The loss of Bergeron, who leads the Bruins in scoring and also has helped to shut down the opposition’s top forwards, could be huge.

“Let's put it this way: If he's not back, we've lost our best player since the beginning of the year,” Bruins coach Claude Julien said. “That sums it up right there.”

Monday’s loss ended a brief two-game winning streak for the Bruins, who will look to regroup against Ottawa Tuesday. Here are three things we learned while the Bruins absorbed their potentially devastating loss.

A NEW YEAR’S DAY HANGOVER CAN LAST THREE DAYS

It was probably not surprising that the Bruins would come out flat after their dramatic and emotional win in the highly anticipated Winter Classic at Fenway. Playing their first game since the spirited 2-1 overtime victory on New Year’s Day, the Bruins didn’t have a whole lot of zip in the first 54 minutes of hockey.

The Rangers had given up 12 goals in the their past four games but had little difficulty shutting down the Bruins until Hunwick beat Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist with 5:27 to play in the third. Just 1:26 later, Hunwick set up a rebound goal by Wheeler to draw Boston even.

Despite the B's late rally, Julien held back few punches back when addressing questions regarding the team’s early play and overall performance.

“We can't think we're going to win hockey games playing the way we are, just showing up for a period, half a period, whatever,” Julien said. “We get ourselves back in the game, get excited ... we didn't even deserve a point tonight. We didn't get it, we didn't deserve it.”

The NHL’s reigning Coach of the Year was not done venting.

“As I mentioned, that's been our biggest thing this year, we keep talking about 60-minute effort. We're not getting it out of this dressing room so far,” said Julien, who was most critical of the team’s inability to be more self-motivated. 

“I know there's been times in the past where they had their dressing room under control, but right now you have to coach, you have to be a cheerleader, you've got to wake them up, you have to do too many things a coach shouldn't have to do at this level,” Julien said. “These are professionals and they have to take ownership of their dressing room at some point.”

At the midway point of the season the Bruins are 21-13-7, a decent record but one that has been marked by inconsistent showings.

“We're just not grabbing it right now. We go in and win a couple of games, get comfortable very easily, and we're back to some of those bad habits and we get a wake-up call again,” Julien said. “We should be able to bounce back tomorrow. I suspect our team will bounce back tomorrow. That's what it's done all year. But we haven't been able to get any momentum and get on any kind of streak because we can't sustain it.”

Julien’s players agreed with that assessment, but whether the message results in better efforts to start games remains to be seen.

“It shouldn't take having our head coach coming in between periods and having to get us going. It's unacceptable as professionals to not bring what it takes to be the team we want to be for two periods,” said Wheeler. “We talked before the game about having a chance to catch teams in front of us, we had two wins and everything was kind of in place to give a good effort and show what we were made of and really assert ourselves to be the team we want to be. But it was the same old story.”

TUUKKA FOUND TROUBLE

Almost as quickly as the Bruins had rallied to draw even in the third period Monday, ex-BU Terrier Chris Drury teamed with Higgins to put the Rangers back in control.

Just 2:30 after Wheeler had tied the game, Drury moved the puck along the left boards to Higgins, who cut to net and drew the puck to his backhand as if he were going to slide behind the cage. Rask went for the fake, moving his right skate off the post and allowing Higgins to tuck in the puck to regain the lead for New York.

“I don't know if I was cheating, but I thought I had the post covered and it went underneath my skate blade,” said Rask, who made 32 saves in the loss. “It sucks.”

After posting four road wins in November, Rask has now lost back-to-back road contests. He was in goal for a 2-0 setback in Toronto on Dec. 19.

THE POWER PLAY STILL IS PITIFUL ON THE ROAD

The Bruins were 0-for-3 on the power play Monday and have gone 10 road games without scoring a man-advantage goal.

For the season, Boston is just 6-for-59 on the power play on the road, clicking at less than 10 percent (9.833) efficiency. The power play is 0-for-33 since scoring at Atlanta on Nov. 19.

With Bergeron out Tuesday and the newly signed Miroslav Satan and injured Milan Lucic still not game ready, if the Bruins hope to return to winning form against the Senators, they could do themselves a big favor by digging in to make things click on the power play.

Rob Bradford contributed to this report from New York.