It was the same story against the Ducks on Thursday. The Bruins erased a two-goal deficit in the third period by scoring twice in 25 seconds but allowed Troy Terry to get open right in front of Korpisalo for the game-winner exactly 30 seconds after they had tied it.

“It’s not a teaching thing. It’s not anybody but ourselves,” Geekie said. “Each guy, myself included, has got to look in the mirror and decide what we want to do and how we want this year to go. I think we’re faced with it pretty quickly and we’ve got to decide what we want to do.”

This was expected to be a down season for the Bruins, who sold off a good part of their veteran core at the 2025 NHL Trade Deadline. As Sturm admitted after the game on Thursday, “Are we an elite team in this League? Probably not.” But the Bruins, and management, thought that they would be defensively stout, that they could win some of those 2-1 games, something president Cam Neely mentioned at the start of the season.

“I knew there was work to do, right? I thought it would be more work offensively than defensively,” Sturm said. “That’s where I’m a little surprised. Yeah, we tweaked a few things system-wise, but still, it should be in our DNA. That’s the Boston Bruins’ DNA.”

Instead, they are scoring goals. Their defense is betraying them.

“It’s normal when you lose a lot of games in a row that you tighten your sticks and everything,” Sturm said. “That’s just, it happens. But those breakdowns in big moments, that can’t happen. Or losing battles in our own end. That can’t happen.”

The optimistic view says that it’s still early, that there are 73 more games to go in the season.

That’s little consolation now for the Bruins, though.

“It’s tough to be glass half full, to be honest with you,” Geekie said. “I think everybody’s sick of it in here.”

So what do they need to fix? What can they clean up before their next big test, another game against the Avalanche (5-0-3) at TD Garden on Saturday (3 p.m. ET; NHLN, NESN, ALT).

“Everything. Everything,” McAvoy said. “We are trying so hard. Even on the last goal, like we want to do the right thing. We want to go pressure the puck, the man on man. We just want it so bad that we’re getting in our own way. We’re doing too much. We’re not doing it the right way.

“We want it. You can see it, how we fight when we go down. We want it. We’re dying to win in here. We’re close every single game and we just can’t find a way to get over the hump. But we’re right there. So, the dam will break sooner or later.”