There is no doubt the Boston Bruins were feeling pretty good about themselves heading into this week. The Black and Gold have elevated into a truly favorable spot over the first few months of the season, and now the B’s are kicking back and getting ready for a long stretch of home games in November.
On Thursday night, the Canadiens also came to Boston for the first time this season, giving the B’s another golden opportunity to test themselves against Stanley Cup-level competition. Even better, the B’s were debuting their brown “varsity sweater” hometown remix alternate jerseys during “Homecoming Night” with the Northeastern University college band adding some pretty cool collegiate-style atmosphere in an enjoyable homage to Boston’s college hockey roots.
As the Northeastern band plays “Back In Black”, the Bruins take to the ice for their “Homecoming Game”. https://t.co/SVAqvFfirG
— Conor Ryan (@ConorRyan_93) November 13, 2026
Unfortunately, the B’s are also in a stretch of playing one game over the course of a week, and the lack of activity showed in an uncharacteristic 5-2 loss to the Canadiens at TD Garden on Thursday night. The Bruins weren’t ready to start and fell down early 2-0 before continuing to self-destruct against a speedy, skilled Habs that finished on their breakaways chances that came courtesy of Boston’s breakdowns.
“Flat” was the operative word used by the Bruins after the fact in only their second home loss of the season. Even in simple effort categories like blocked shots, Montreal had a massive advantage (23-6), which suggests the hungry Habs wanted this game a lot more than a Bruins club resting on its laurels at home.
“Hopefully it’s a good lesson. We always talk about how hard this league is, especially in a rivalry game like that [against] Montreal at home,” said Marco Sturm. “We were just very flat. There was just nothing going on. I thought David [Pastrnak’s] line was the only line going very early on…they pushed.
“But we were just very flat and then all of a sudden, we are down 2-0 [in the first period] because of it. So that for me was the disappointing part today was that we came out flat. Overall we were just not good enough, me included, goalie, players…you name it. Today was no good and when you’re down 4-0 you try to do something, I guess. But I think we can all be better.”
To Sturm’s point, Jeremy Swayman had the rare game when he was pulled on Thursday, in favor of Mikey DiPietro, letting in a couple of breakaway goals after running into a retreating Charlie McAvoy on a wraparound score for Kirby Dach at the start of the game. That was followed by Mason Lohrei losing a one-on-one battle to Josh Anderson at the net front a few minutes later, a sequence that felt like so many of Boston’s potential weak spots were exposed at once by a Montreal crew on top of their game.
THE HABS OPEN THE SCORING! Kirby Dach takes it himself and scores the wraparound 🔥 https://t.co/t6NEpLrgdp
— TSN (@TSN_Sports) November 13, 2026
“Against a team like Montreal, it’s unacceptable to start like that,” said David Pastrnak. “It’s on us players and we’ve got to take the responsibility. We got the legs going and we got some chances, but we obviously forgot about playing defense and gave up a few breakaways.”
The truth of it on Thursday was that the Bruins looked rusty, out of sorts and pretty much all their best players struggled outside of the Elias Lindholm line that produced a pair of Casey Mittelstadt goals as Boston’s only offense. The real silver lining in defeat was that Mittelstadt continues to