This Bruins team can't get away with slow starts

About 10 minutes later, Cirelli and Guentzel were at it again, this time on a Nikita Zadorov turnover up the boards, and the Bruins spent the rest of the game chasing after a Lightning team ahead of them.

As Marco Sturm knows well, that is a tough way to go through life in the NHL, and that goes doubly so for a team like the B’s that’s a little light in the offensive firepower department.

“They came ready to play. They lost in a row [to start the season]. We know their starting six want to get to work right away and we just were not ready,” admitted Sturm. “That’s why we made mistakes and that’s why we ended up four times pretty much on an empty net [that Tampa was shooting at].

“There was no question in my mind we were going to stay in the game and my guys were going to respond. The thing is that it’s hard in this league to chase the game, especially against a veteran group. It’s hard and when you’re not ready to play they are going to do that. They just wanted it more than we did in the first half of the hockey game.”

And truth be told, it was simply about Tampa’s best players being better than Boston’s best players for the game.

Boston’s second line produced the B’s first goal of the game with Casey Mittelstadt striking from the slot, and the B’s made it a one-goal game in the second when Pavel Zacha and Morgan Geekie teamed up for an offensive zone faceoff play during 4-on-4 play. But Geekie, Elias Lindholm and David Pastrnak didn’t account for much throughout the game while getting two goals scored against them, and McAvoy did not really have his “A” game going at all for the entire afternoon.

“We knew they were going to come out hot. Day games, you’ve got to figure out a way to get going especially at home in a divisional game,” said Geekie. “I wouldn’t pinpoint it on one thing. I think we got our game going toward the end of the second [period] and into the third, but this league is too good to fall behind early.”

The other big problem in Boston’s first loss of the season?

It was a power play that had been fairly productive in the first few games and certainly wasn’t costing the Bruins while consistently building momentum with puck possession and quality chances. On Monday the Bruins needed something from their man advantage to get them over the top in a game they trailed by just a single goal for essentially the final 30 minutes of the game, but instead the B’s power play went 0-for-5 and couldn’t push through with the Joonas Korpisalo pulled for extra skater in the final minute of the game.

“Going into the third, I thought if we stick with the game and maybe we get a power play [in the third] we’re going to have a good chance to win the hockey game,” said Sturm. “We did all this except with the power play I thought it was just a little too slow. Yes, plays were there but our puck speed wasn’t there. Those are the moments in those tight hockey games against a team like Tampa where you need to grab those moments, and we just didn’t do that today [against Tampa Bay].”

The end portion of the game turned into a pretty entertaining back-and-forth with David Pastrnak throwing out a kick save in net with the goalie pulled, and then blowing up Nikita Kucherov with a massive hit that saved the B’s from allowing an empty netter during the late third period scramble.

“[Pastrnak] is our leader. He does everything. He wants to do win. He is good on the bench. We just need to dial in on the power play,” said Sturm. “Other than that, I can’t say anything negative about any of my guys. Those top guys just need to come up big in big moments. We have had a really good start [to the season]. But you can’t rest. It’s a tough league.

“There are going to be a lot of ups and downs over the season, but we want to be consistent. I think that’s going to be the biggest message from me to our guys.”

But it was too little, too late for the Bruins after a sleepy start against the Lightning that they frankly just aren’t going to be talented enough to overcome this season.