Troiani Rink Report

The Boston Bruins looked like a team that could gain some traction when they defeated the Colorado Avalanche on Saturday to snap their six-game losing streak.

The plan was to carry over the momentum the club had playing the top team in the Western Conference; however, the Bruins responded with an embarrassing 7-2 rout reminiscent of the disastrous 2024-25 campaign.

“Can’t get much worse really,” Morgan Geekie told reporters after the loss, per team-provided video. “I don’t know, sorry.

“I just know how hard this group works and how bad everybody wants it. To show up like that … I don’t know, we put them on the power play five times and they score on four of them. You’re shooting yourselves in the foot. It’s been like that all year. But 5-on-5, we don’t really create a ton. We’re a little better defensively but we’re still giving up lapses. I don’t know. I wish I could tell you more, but I don’t know. It’s tough today.

Poor defensive zone coverage, lackadaisical puck coverage and careless breakouts led to Boston’s seventh loss in eight games and an 4-7-0 overall record in Marco Sturm’s first 11 games behind the bench.

“You either buy in or not,” Sturm told Andy Brickley on NESN’s postgame coverage. “That’s it right there. That’s the difference. If you just look at the Ottawa team today, they do it and we’re not. That’s the game.”

The Bruins found themselves shorthanded five times with their top defensemen Charlie McAvoy and Nikita Zadorov guilty on three of them.

“I felt like after the second we could have come back and then I go out there and take that penalty and kill all the momentum, so that’s definitely on me,” Zadorov told reporters in Ottawa. “I feel like I do that 10 times a game and never trip the guy, but my stick got stuck between his legs. I’ve got to watch the stick.

“So, I think that kind killed momentum a little bit, they score right away. So obviously they have a really good dangerous power play; we knew before the game. We’ve got to stay out of the box somehow.”

The penalty kill had actually been a highlight in Boston’s games, but allowing four goals while shorthanded just made the loss that more hard to swallow.

“I think it finally caught up to us a little bit. We can’t take five penalties every night,” Sturm told Brickley. “It’s going to be hard on our killers. We knew that they have a really good faceoff centerman lining up every time and they won their face offs really clean, and we just didn’t do a good job.”

Ottawa spotted Boston an early lead when Geekie lit the lamp with his team-leading seventh goal just over three minutes into the game. The Senators then clamped down and took advantage of the Bruins’ defensive miscues and skated away with the victory.

The Bruins will have to have short memories of the rout with the New York Islanders waiting for them in Boston for a clash at TD Garden on Tuesday.

“You always take something out of any games. Obviously, it’s a slap to the face,” Zadorov said. “We’re the Boston Bruins, that’s unacceptable. We gotta come up (Tuesday against the Islanders) and then play like it … like we should in front of our crowd.

“It’s the best thing in this league, you have a game like that (against the Senators), but you regroup tomorrow and show them who you are actually.”

Here are more notes from Boston’s blowout loss to Ottawa:
— Jeremy Swayman allowed seven goals on 24 shots, including two tallies in the second period when the Senators registered just two shots on goal.

He is ready to put this game behind him and his teammates.

“It’s disappointing. That’s not who we are,” Swayman told reporters after his fourth loss of the season. “And I think that’s the message that we really want to send to each other is that this is a one-off. It’s not who we are and we have to move forward in the game (against the Islanders), and that’s what we’re going to focus on.”

— Viktor Arvidsson scored his second goal in a Black and Gold jersey in as many games with 10 seconds remaining in the game.

— Elias Lindholm entered the game ranked third in the league in face-off wins with a 58.9 win percentage. He had 109 wins in the 185 faceoffs he’s taken. The Bruins lead the league with 362 face-off wins.

Ottawa won 39 of the 67 faceoffs in the contest between the two clubs, and Lindholm uncharacteristically lost eight of the 12 he took in the loss.

— The Bruins will look for a better performance when they host the New York Islanders in Boston on Tuesday night. Puck drop from TD Garden is scheduled for 7:15 p.m. ET on NESN and 98.5 The Sports Hub.

Fans can also tune in for the season premiere of “Unobstructed Views” with Andrew Raycroft, Tuukka Rask and Patrice Bergeron on NESN+ for an alternative broadcast.

More Bruins: Bruins Place Hampus Lindholm on Injured Reserve, Jonathan Aspirot Recalled