It was pretty telling when Marco Sturm recently spoke of his hockey team’s tendency to play up, or down, to their competition as a very real trait for this season’s edition of the Black and Gold. Sturm was speaking about the Bruins rising to the occasion against a host of quality, playoff level teams in a tough schedule ahead of the postseason, but the danger of taking lesser teams for granted remains a part of this B’s team identity as well. It certainly held true in some big games with playoff implications against the Wild, the Blue Jackets and the Red Wings recently, but it’s also led to a couple of embarrassing blemish-type losses to Toronto and Florida teams just playing out the string this month. The latest letdown “effort” was Thursday night’s 2-1 loss to an injury-ravaged Panthers team at Amerant Bank Arena where essentially the B’s didn’t start putting in a winning level of effort and urgency until the third period.Read More