The Boston Bruins had been priding themselves this season on their undeniable fight, and on keeping things close even when a game didn’t ultimately go their way. It had been true for the most part, and there have already been a handful of times when the Black and Gold clawed their way back into games while ultimately going down swinging.
That was not the case on Monday night in Ottawa where the team looked way too much like the doomed B’s group that imploded last season. Instead, mistakes compounded for a team that showed very little work ethic or emotion throughout the game, and then everything completely fell apart late in a 7-1 blowout road loss to the Senators – without Brady Tkachuk in the lineup – at the Canadian Tire Centre.
It was eerily similar to way too many games last year where the penalty kill was rendered completely ineffective, the Bruins took too many penalties and their best players weren’t even close to good enough against a divisional opponent.
Was it an emotional letdown after they were able to pull themselves together for a strong win against Colorado over the weekend? Is it a team that heard some of the whispers about Pavel Zacha trade rumors over the weekend and played like a team just waiting for the executioner’s axe to fall again after hitting a rough patch in the season?
Or is it that this Bruins team is around the same level of bad as last season’s group and that there has been no discernible change in play, approach or consistency despite changing the coaching staff and some of the complementary pieces?
A frustrated Marco Sturm was searching for answers afterward and said it came down to a pretty simple set of facts.
“You either buy in or not…that’s the difference,” said Sturm to the NESN postgame show following the loss. “You look at Ottawa and they’re doing it and we’re not. That was the difference.”
Marco Sturm after the loss
— NESN (@NESN) October 28, 2025
"You either buy in or not." pic.twitter.com/X3j8NgxZM5
The game spun out of control in the third period when the Senators piled up power-play goals as Nikita Zadorov and Charlie McAvoy were taking turns heading to the penalty box, but the battle was truly lost in the second period. The Senators broke a 1-1 tie little more than a minute into the second period on a particularly bad shift by Elias Lindholm away from the puck, an area that is supposed to be his biggest strength as a player.
Lindholm gave up the middle of the ice in the neutral zone as the Senators went right up the gut of the B’s defense, and then made a half-hearted attempt to stick-check Claude Giroux as he cut to the net and redirected a Michael Amadio centering bid to the front of the net.
For a guy with a really good defensive reputation as a two-way center, this is a pretty awful defensive shift for Elias Lindholm in both the neutral zone and the D-zone https://t.co/zFeiiJDMzu
— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) October 28, 2025
It felt like the Bruins were spinning their wheels for most of the second period after a momentum-crushing moment, and eventually trailed the game by two goals headed into the third period after Mason Lohrei turned over a puck below the B’s goal line.
Things got even worse when Zadorov took a penalty seconds into the start of the third period and Tim Stutzle rifled a power-play score home that put the game out of reach. At that point it was déjà vu all over again for a fragile Bruins hockey team that saw this play out way too many times last season.
“It can’t get much worse, really,” said a flabbergasted Morgan Geekie postgame after he scored a goal in his fourth straight game. “I just know how hard this group works and how much this team wants it, and for us to show up like that is just like…I don’t know…we put them on the power play five times and they score on four of them?
“You are shooting yourselves in the foot and it’s been like that all year. Five-on-five we didn’t create a ton. We were a little better defensively, but we’re still having lapses and stuff like that. I wish I could tell you more, but I don’t know. It’s tough today. It’s tough to put this behind you. This is going to weigh on a lot of guys. It’s tough to let it go, but it’s a day-to-day league. You just try to develop some consistency. Winning games is no good if you can’t do it all the time.”
There were some really interesting, and somewhat concerning, trends in this game that bear watching moving forward. Charlie McAvoy played a season-low 17:23 of ice time and took a pair of penalties while once again having some issues when Lohrei was his defensive partner.
Sturm mixed up his lineup after a big emotional win over Colorado last weekend, and slotted in Marat Khusnutdinov while taking out Johnny Beecher in a spot where maybe it would have been a better call to just roll with the same group.
David Pastrnak had another extremely forgettable performance with a minus-2 and one shot on net and didn’t look all that much better than he did against Colorado when he sat for the final half of the third period. If any decision-makers were hoping that the idea of potentially dealing away his good buddy Zacha would light a fire under their biggest game-breaker, it appeared to do the opposite in an ugly loss to Ottawa.
Elliotte Friedman is reporting that the Vancouver #Canucks have interest in Bruins centre Pavel Zacha
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 26, 2025
🎥: Sportsnet pic.twitter.com/fUyoOj6dnP
It was admirable that Zadorov was taking accountability for a tripping penalty that opened up the floodgates for the Senators in the third period, but the game was lost by the Black and Gold well before that point.
“Obviously we got our ass kicked today,” said Zadorov. “We felt pretty good in that game after the second that we could come back from a 3-1 [deficit], but then I go up there and take the penalty that kills all the momentum. So that was definitely on me. It killed the momentum when they scored right away.
“You take something out of every game. Obviously, it was a slap to the face. We are the Boston Bruins and that is unacceptable. So we need to come out tomorrow and play like we should in front of our crowd. We can regroup and show who we are, actually.”
The good news for the Bruins is that they can quickly change the narrative with a home game on Monday night against the Islanders, and that they should be well-rested after going through the motions amidst a stink bomb in Ottawa.
“This is not who we are, and that’s what we want to focus on and show everybody,” said Jeremy Swayman. “I know this team is going to be just fine. We just need to move forward and take the positives.”
Are we all sure this is not who they are?
Optimism was high after a solid training camp and a good opening three games to the season, but the performance on the ice is always the great indicator as to exactly who any hockey team actually is going to be. And Monday’s blowout loss kicked up a lot of bad feelings that this B’s group hasn’t exactly separated themselves, as of yet, from last season’s hockey abomination.