Boston still had plenty of work to do if it wanted to put that six-game slide in the rearview mirror.
But a win over Colorado at least felt like a step in the right direction for a team that — amid an extremely uneven start — has at least shown some resolve and an unwillingness to roll over amid adversity.
“I spoke a lot about just the character of the guys we had, and I think we came in yesterday and had a long video session and a lot of teaching and cleaned up a lot of those things today,” Morgan Geekie said of Boston’s response on Saturday. “Obviously, there’s still room for improvement, and we’re not going to stop at one. But it’s a good step in the right direction. It’s really easy to build off a game like today.”
And on Monday, the Bruins uprooted whatever progress was built against the Senators — taking about 10 steps back in what was an ugly 7-2 loss at the Canadian Tire Center.
“I thought giving the guys a day off yesterday, coming in today, all ready to go — and we didn’t,” Sturm said. “That, for me, it’s the most disappointing thing that you know, we took it lightly — I don’t know lightly, but we just probably were not serious enough right from the start. And that’s that’s really unacceptable.”
A lopsided loss to Ottawa stands as the seventh setback in 11 games.
But in a campaign that has already seen the Bruins relinquish late leads and cough up back-breaking tallies in see-saw bouts, Monday’s no-show stood as the toughest pill to swallow.
Critics have plenty of ammunition when it comes to taking pot shots at this Bruins club — be it their dearth of proven talent up front, porous D-zone coverage, or propensity of letting go of the rope at critical junctures of games.
But after a miserable 2024-25 season where Boston routinely found itself run out of the building in blowouts and beatdowns, Sturm’s squad could at least hang their hat on the fact that this flawed roster was going to scrap, claw, and refuse to go out quietly.
The Bruins aren’t going to out-skill opponents and outscore their mistakes, night in and night out.
But numerous one-goal losses and third-period scoring surges this month at least offered hope that last year’s team was going to represent the low point of this ongoing rebuild.
Harping on that optimism sure feels like a fool’s errand after Monday — as one would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between what played out in Ottawa and the 2024-25 team that slammed shut a nearly 20-year contention window in Boston.
“Can’t get much worse, really. … I just know how hard this group works and how bad everybody wants it, and then to show up like that is just like — I don’t know,” Geekie said Monday. “We put them on the power play five times. They score four of them.
“It’s like, you shooting yourselves in the foot, and it’s been like that all year. But I mean, five-on-five, we don’t really create a ton. I mean, we’re a little better defensively, but we’re still giving up lapses and stuff like that. So I don’t know. It’s just, I wish I could tell you more. I don’t know. It’s tough today.”
It comes as little surprise that Geekie is still searching for answers after the Bruins regressed in just about every area of the game on Wednesday.
After tightening up defensively on Saturday against Colorado, Boston’s mistake-prone structure was shredded once again by a Sens team soldiering on without Brady Takchuk.
A defensive pairing of Charlie McAvoy and Mason Lohrei continued to take on water — with the Bruins now outscored, 9-6, in that duo’s 109:55 of 5-on-5 reps together this season.
A revamped pairing of McAvoy and Nikita Zadorov didn’t fare much better. Just eight seconds into the third period of a 3-1 game, Zadorov was whistled for interference. And just five seconds later, Tim Stutzle snapped a puck past Jeremy Swayman for a power-play goal.
Boston’s penalty kill — one of the few dependable strengths on this club — surrendered four goals on five power-play bids for Ottawa. And while the defensive structure splintered, it was far from a sterling night for Swayman (17 saves on 24 shots).
“After the second [period], I felt like we could have come back in that game after 3-1, then I go up there and take that penalty, kills all [the] momentum,” Zadorov said. “So it’s definitely on me. … We’ve got to stay out of the box somehow.”
Add in another night where Boston’s offense failed to generate quality looks beyond an early snipe from Geekie (following a similar script as last year), and the Bruins did little to resemble the “hard out” that both Cam Neely and Don Sweeney pledged this team would be before this season commenced.
It was expected for the Bruins to go through plenty of growing pains, but few expected the same lackluster effort and performance from last year to permeate into this current campaign.
And with 71 games left on the docket, there’s plenty of time or a loss like Monday’s to snowball even further.
“You’ve got to buy in or not,” Sturm said. “That’s right there. That’s the difference. If you look at Ottawa, they do it, and we’re not.”
Conor Ryan can be reached at conor.ryan@globe.com.