Bruins Have Plenty to Learn From Early Season Losses

“The head wasn’t there today,” said head coach Marco Sturm. “I tried, but I knew we were not going anywhere today.”

Sturm also noted that, though the schedule shouldn’t be an excuse so early, it didn’t help things. Newly named captain of the Bruins, David Pastrnak, had similar thoughts.

“I don’t want to make excuses,” Pastrnak said. “But it’s the third game in four days, the first time this year. It’s always a little different at the start of the season. It’s all of us that have been struggling lately, and we just have to figure it out.”

The Bruins are the only team in the Atlantic Division to have played four games this season, while only three teams in the Eastern Conference and four across the NHL have played as many.

At the same time, the team is just four games into an 84-game season. The Bruins are coming off a full offseason and will face plenty of difficult stretches like this one as the season progresses. Learning how to play through them without allowing the schedule to dictate their level of play will be important.

It’s undeniably difficult to fly into three different cities in four nights and play NHL hockey at its highest level each time. Even so, every point counts and the Bruins need to take advantage of fresh legs now, knowing every team in the league will face its own difficult stretches over the course of the season.

The good news is that nobody on the Bruins seemed to be using the schedule as an excuse for their play. Instead, the players and coaches largely acknowledged that they needed to be better, which brings the Bruins to another important lesson from Monday’s loss: accountability has to come from everyone.

Bruins Need Veterans to Lead

Rookie James Hagens shouldered a lot of the blame for some of the goals the Senators scored on Monday, but Sturm made it clear that everybody played their part in why the game went south. Hagens wasn’t playing his best hockey, though he did score the team’s lone goal in the contest, and Sturm emphasized that the veterans in the room were the ones who needed to take charge and help the younger players on the roster.

“Yes, [Hagens] probably had a tough night like anyone else,” Sturm said when asked about Hagens being on the ice for two goals against. “But I won’t blame him. He’s a kid who needs to learn. I think our top guys, games like this, they have to be in charge. I can’t ask for a James Hagens to take charge; yes, he needs to be better, but I think overall as a group we just gotta help those kids out and the kids have to play better as well. I won’t blame my young guys for that. They’re kids, they need to learn the hard way sometimes, but they need help, and that’s all of us.”

It was refreshing to hear Sturm acknowledge that the younger players had tough nights without making them responsible for a loss in which the entire team struggled. It was also important to hear that he needs the top performers to lead and allow the young players to grow from these moments rather than hang their heads.

Nikita Zadorov gave a long, thoughtful answer to what went wrong for the Bruins and made it clear that they needed to play their brand of hockey to succeed. He also noted that the team couldn’t hang goaltender Jeremy Swayman out to dry so many times in a game.

“You can see it from the first minute of the game,” said Zadorov. “I don’t know why. Obviously, we have one divisional game in the first 17 games. I think it’s important in the hardest division in the league to get those points, especially against the team who’s been dominating us for the past two years.”

Zadorov noted that the Bruins should have already been annoyed and ready to play against the Senators, but they weren’t.

“It’s on us to do the homework and make sure it never happens again.”

This is perhaps the biggest takeaway for the Bruins from Monday’s loss. They know what went wrong and what they need to do differently. Now they have to make sure they actually learn from it.

Bruins Need to Play Bruins Hockey

Zadorov mentioned how the Bruins played structured defensive hockey and waited until the very end of their opening game of the season against the New York Rangers to finally score and win the game. The Bruins haven’t proven that they’re built to outskill most teams in the NHL offensively yet. Rather, they’re going to need to be disciplined, capitalize on opportunities when they arise and limit high-danger opportunities against them. Zadorov noted that they’ve gotten away from this over the past few periods before concluding that it’s early in the year and that things will be fine.

“It’s okay. It’s early in the year, obviously,” said Zadorov. “There’s new faces, there’s different line mates; the guys take time. But I think we’ll be fine. We still have this inside our room, still have our leadership pushing it. We’re just going to tweak a couple of things and be fine.”

The Bruins have plenty to take away from their first four games. The team will also get better when Charlie McAvoy returns from his six-game suspension. Realistically, starting the season 2-2-0 isn’t as bad as things could have been without such an integral piece in the lineup.

This is what makes Monday’s loss potentially valuable. The Bruins don’t need to panic after one or two bad games. They need to learn from them. An 84-game season will give Boston plenty of opportunities to make mistakes. They’re only going to get better as things start to mesh, McAvoy returns and some players gain confidence. For now, it’s about taking the good with the bad. The important thing is making sure these early mistakes and missteps become lessons rather than recurring problems.