While the Bruins have been an undeniably pleasant surprise this season as they sit firmly ensconced in a playoff spot the week prior to Thanksgiving, they could be in an even better position than they are currently.
The B’s have lost five one-goal games this season where they fell just short of pushing to overtime and earning themselves a point, and Wednesday night was another example of that in a 4-3 loss to the Anaheim Ducks at the Honda Center. The Bruins actually tied the game in the third period on a Morgan Geekie power play strike with less than eight minutes to go in the game, but then Boston immediately exhaled and allowed the Ducks to score the game-winner while dominating the final seven minutes of play.
It was actually similar to the home loss to the Ducks earlier this season, which some Bruins drew a direct parallel to following the defeat.
“A little bit up and down. I feel it’s the same thing that happened the last time we played these guys where we let it slip away in the third [period],” said Morgan Geekie. “We started getting back on our heels a little bit after a good start to the third period.
I liked our game for the most part, but those little opportunities other teams are going to take advantage, and I think they did that to us tonight. I’m super proud that we battled back to tie it up, but you look back on these and its two points that we kind of threw away again.”
To Geekie’s point, the Bruins would have the most points (29) in the Eastern Conference if they had simply picked up the loser OT point in each of those one-goal losses and would have the second-most points in the NHL behind the Colorado Avalanche. It really illustrated just how important these points could be, particularly with everybody holding in games in hand on the Black and Gold at this early point of the season.
The winning goal for the Ducks was simply a bad bounce as an Ian Moore point shot bounced off Alex Steeves’ pads, and then beat Joonas Korpisalo for the game-winner with less than four minutes to go in the game.
TIED NO MOORE 🚨
— Victory+ (@victoryplustv) November 20, 2025
Ian Moore puts the Ducks back in front late in the third!#FlyTogether pic.twitter.com/wqO88LMCyx
But there were some defensive mistakes to point out on an evening where the Bruins' offense scored three goals, including a pair of power play strikes from Geekie with an NHL-leading 14 goals this season, which their head coach feels like should be enough to win them a game.
“Frustrating leaving here without a point,” admitted Marco Sturm. “I think offensively we did a good enough job that we could have won the game, but defensively it just was not good enough.
“I think, in general, it starts with our ‘D’. We just didn’t do our job, let’s put it that way. We want to make sure that the defense and that is their job…that’s it. There was a lot in between and a lot of panic for some reason, and that cost us some goals tonight.”
It should be noted that the Ducks are a handful defensively for every NHL team this season, of course, but the B's put themselves in a good position before the late-game breakdown.
Predictably, the Bruins are going to struggle in their own end while missing Charlie McAvoy indefinitely after it was learned he underwent facial surgery this week and was home recovering after taking a slapper to the face last weekend. The new pairings had the struggling Henri Jokiharju skating with Hampus Lindholm, and both players struggled mightily while finishing with a minus-3 apiece in defeat.
The other two pairings of Nikita Zadorov/Jonathan Aspirot and Andrew Peeke/Mason Lohrei fared better against the Ducks on Wednesday night, but the Bruins will need to figure out a defensive game plan that lowers the goals against average behind goaltending that’s been good enough to win pretty every night.
“In the third period, we dominated and then we started sitting back…I don’t know why,” said Zadorov. “We played scared and when you play scared in this league you are going to lose hockey games.
"You can’t do it. You just need to grow up kind of a little bit, mature a little bit, take pride and not played scared out there. As soon as you sit back, they smell blood and they’re really good offensively and they’re going to capitalize on it. Every person deals with stress differently, so you need to find a way, whatever way, you need to play an even game. We’ve been talking about staying calm emotionally and not getting too high or too low on each other…and help each other. And I thought we did it through the first 50 minutes of the game, and then it just completely flipped in the last 10 minutes of the game. We’ve done it four or five times this year already where we could have had four points at least, maybe we could have eight [points]. Those points are important. We are already 25 percent into the season, so it’s time to mature a little bit, take responsibility and to play like a man.”
It's really difficult to argue with Zadorov’s perspective based on how poorly the B’s have reacted this season to many third period “heat of the battle” moments when the game is equally on the line for both teams.
The Bruins still rank 24th in the NHL in team defense while allowing 3.32 goals per game, a mark that has improved slightly in recent weeks while still being too much for a hockey club expected to be built on the bedrock of defense and goaltending. There really isn’t much of an excuse for it, aside from the injuries, when the B’s offense is better than expected, and their power play attack has been among the best in the NHL while again producing a pair of goals in the loss to the Ducks.
But it’s time for the Bruins to tighten up in those situations where all-important points are on the line, and they have let them slip through their fingers too many times as they did on the first night of their California road trip.