SAN JOSE, Calif. — In Sunday’s third period, David Pastrnak carried the puck down the left-side wall. Muscle memory activated for Pastrnak and Morgan Geekie. In such situations, both know exactly what to do.

Pastrnak wheeled around the net. Geekie hung back and waited for his teammate to come out the other side. Then when Pastrnak turned and threw a backhand pass out front, Geekie gained position on Shakir Mukhamadullin, put his stick down and rammed the puck home for the Boston Bruins’ only goal.

🖐 GOALS ON THE TRIP FOR GEEKS pic.twitter.com/uaFfr0nC7h

— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) November 24, 2025

“We scored a bunch of goals like this last year,” Pastrnak said after the Bruins’ 3-1 loss to the San Jose Sharks. “I always try to look for him. He times it well. He knows where to go.”

Geekie now has 17 goals, tied for the league lead with Nathan MacKinnon. He tucked home five during the Bruins’ three-game California swing, including two in their only win, against the Los Angeles Kings. Pastrnak, meanwhile, leads the Bruins with 29 points.

The problem is that neither Geekie nor Pastrnak kills penalties. They cannot score when they’re on the bench. It takes them a shift or two to find their legs after sitting idle during penalty kills.

“You automatically leave your best players on the bench,” said coach Marco Sturm. “If you ever played the game before, you know you’ve got to be in a rhythm. If you’re not, it’s tough to get going again. You could see it in the third. Guys are rolling. Guys all of a sudden have a little bit of momentum. But we just couldn’t do it before because of penalties. And that’s the difference.”

The Bruins took six minor penalties against the Sharks. This is not out of the ordinary: They have taken a league-high 110 minors and their 306 penalty minutes is most in the NHL.

“Obviously we’ve got to talk to the group,” said Sturm. “We already did a bunch of times. We have to find a way. Because five penalties a night, it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be a hard season. Players are too good, too skilled to be on the power play. We have to correct it.”

The Bruins have been playing with matches all season. It’s costing them points.

“We just took too many penalties,” said Elias Lindholm, who played for the first time since suffering a lower-body injury on Oct. 30. “We played well in the second, had all the momentum. Then took too many penalties. Careless a bit. I don’t know how many penalties we took. But it’s hard to win games in this league when we’re in the box that much.”

Pastrnak played 21:29. He thudded six pucks on Sharks goalie Yaroslav Askarov, with six more attempts that didn’t make it to the net.

Geekie played 16:08. He also had six shots.

Sturm wants nothing more than to play Pastrnak and Geekie as much as possible. But Sturm had to deal with 8:29 of short-handed ice time to distribute elsewhere. As good as Sean Kuraly (4:37 on the penalty kill) is at playing man-down hockey, that is ice time that Sturm would prefer to give to Pastrnak and Geekie, either at five-on-five or on the power play.

“It’s every game,” Pastrnak said. “We’re taking almost double the penalties as we have power plays. It’s tough. It’s too much relying on the penalty kill. The tempo is not there. We just have to stay out of the box.”

There is also the matter of giving talented youngsters such as Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith more time and space to do their thing in the offensive zone. Jeremy Swayman (28 saves) did his best to keep the Sharks off the board. But in the second period, with Jonathan Aspirot off for tripping, Swayman could not stop Celebrini from snapping home a riser. A flash screen by Alexander Wennberg did not help.

On the back end, Sturm had to lean on Nikita Zadorov (5:06 on the PK) and Hampus Lindholm (4:07), his top two defensemen. In the second, 10 seconds after Aspirot was called for another tripping penalty, Lindholm followed his teammate to the box for cuffing William Eklund in the back of the head.

Zadorov killed the entire five-on-three. Such situations compromise Zadorov’s five-on-five work because of the calories he’s required to burn on the PK.

“Probably feet,” Sturm said of why his players are taking so many penalties. “Little bit of stupidity, I would say. It’s just the way it is. We’ve just got to be smart.”