It felt, after Thursday night’s 7-5 home loss to the Anaheim Ducks, like the Boston Bruins stared into the abyss and wanted no part of a repeat of last season’s complete and utter collapse.
Unfortunately for them, that is not translating on the ice right now.
The Bruins once again showed enviable fight and spirit in scoring a pair of third-period goals to tie a game up that they should have at least earned a point from, but once again they gave it right back in a stupefying 7-5 defeat at the hands of a skilled Anaheim team. It marked the sixth consecutive loss for the Black and Gold, which has them submerged in the Atlantic Division basement with the Tampa Bay Lightning at this early juncture of the season.
Bruins players used words like “embarrassing” and “devastating” to describe what was going on, and there were some who pointedly expressed that some of their teammates “weren’t doing their jobs” as the losses keep piling up.
The key play arrived right after the Bruins had scored a pair of goals within 25 seconds of each other and forced the Ducks to take a timeout with the game suddenly tied at 5-5. David Pastrnak and Morgan Geekie both stepped up for the B’s, as did Nikita Zadorov, kick-starting the 2-on-1 transition play that ended with Geekie burying his third goal in the last two games for the Bruins.
I love when Nikita Zadorov randomly turns into Cale Makar pic.twitter.com/FEFVKPdH08
— Evan Marinofsky (@EvanMarinofsky) October 24, 2025
But then a major defensive gaffe cropped up with Charlie McAvoy jumping at a player with the puck that was already covered defensively by Mason Lohrei below the goal line, and that freed up a wide-open Troy Terry in front with absolutely nobody home defensively. Nikita Nesterenko slid a quick pass to him, and it was game over very, very quickly for a Bruins team suffering massive breakdowns at the worst times right after they score goals.
🚨 Terry 🚨
— Anaheim Ducks (@AnaheimDucks) October 24, 2025
A great pass from Nester and Troy roofs it!
We're back in the lead! #FlyTogether pic.twitter.com/nvyyJHk9lQ
“It’s just embarrassing to me, to the fans, to everybody,” said Geekie. “Everything is poor. It’s one of those things where it’s not a teaching thing. We are doing it to ourselves. Each guy, including myself, needs to look in the mirror and decide what we want to do and how we want this year to go. We’re facing this [adversity] pretty quickly, and we’ve got to decide what we want to do.
“Obviously, we got off to a pretty good start, but we kind of threw that down the drain pretty quickly. Our coaching staff prepares us every night to play and for us to throw games away like that is not acceptable. From top to bottom, we’ve got to be better.”
Clearly, there are massive defensive issues with a team that, it was assumed, was going to be on solid defensive ground to start the season.
Instead, the Bruins really haven’t had any issues scoring the puck, but they have allowed a whopping 33 goals in nine games, which has them ranked 28th in the NHL with 3.67 goals allowed per game. And it hasn’t really been a goaltending issue, though Joonas Korpisalo (six goals allowed on 29 shots) didn’t have one of his stronger games on Thursday night either.
If that continues, the Bruins will undoubtedly be languishing at the bottom of the league again this season and will probably be undergoing another fire sale at the trade deadline, along with other potential drastic actions.
There is undoubtedly some pain being felt due to the continued injury absence of stalwart D-man Hampus Lindholm, but on Thursday night, McAvoy was one of the reasons that things fell apart at the worst possible time.
And he was among the many searching for answers after it was all over.
“This is devastating the way we’re losing these games. It’s just killing us. We’re fighting so hard and we just can’t stop beating ourselves. It’s pretty defeating right now,” admitted McAvoy after the game, while at the very least being an accountable leader addressing it all. “The reality is every year is a new year and experience doesn’t automatically win you a damn thing. It’s a new group and we have to create that confidence and that winning mindset with this group. The only way to do that is win and to do it the right way. We’re doing the opposite right now. Not too long ago [the mindset] was ‘we’re going to win these games’, and you can sort of see right now that [the mindset] right now is kind of the opposite.
“The only way to do that is to win games, and those are deposits in the bank. The best teams I’ve been on we would just win games when we were up, down or in between anything…we just felt like we could win, but that’s because we did it. We know we fight. That’s great. But we just can’t even find a way to get a point right now because we give it up as soon as we get it. I can tell you I am frustrated and upset, but it’s up to us to get out of it.”
Some of the adjustments will undoubtedly involve the beleaguered defensemen corps, and it probably starts with breaking up McAvoy and Lohrei after watching that pair struggle to work as a defensive tandem in their own end. There have been too many breakdowns and too many times when they both want to be the aggressive D-man attacking rather than holding the fort down in front of the net, along with centers that have been defensively too far away from the slot as well.
Some players mentioned the brand new hybrid man-on-man defensive philosophy as being a factor, and others completely shut that down as a reason for hesitation, confusion or unsurety about what they are supposed to be doing coverage-wise in the D-zone. But it’s clear that something is consistently going wrong with mistakes being made, and things will not improve until that is properly addressed.
“It’s embarrassing. It’s not how we want to play or how we should play,” said Zadorov. “Giving up so many goals every night and expect to win a hockey game? We’re scoring five…that should be an automatic win all the time. That’s not our identity. We’ve got to find a way to shut it down before it’s too late.
“Everybody should know where they are at [in coverage]. It’s just individual mistakes costing us right now. When you lose six in a row and things don’t go your way, the pressure hits. That’s where mentally strong teams don’t let it leak out or let it bleed too much. It’s a man’s game. You have to be prepared for it and meet pressure with pressure. You’ve got to go out there and make plays at the end of the day. Your teammates are counting on you, the organization is counting on you and the fans are counting on you, so you’ve got to face that challenge and play tough hockey.”
Things will not get any easier for the Black and Gold with a Saturday afternoon date against the Colorado Avalanche team that handily defeated them last week, particularly after Terry, Nesterenko and Mikael Granlund torched the Bruins' defense for four goals allowed in Thursday night’s loss to Anaheim.
But maybe, just maybe, that challenge will bring out the best of the Bruins and mark a turning point for a group that’s sick and tired of losing. If not, well then look out below.