“They just didn’t play good (sic) enough. That was the only reason,” said Sturm before Sunday night’s 3-2 loss to the Mammoth. “Our best players have to be best, and I thought [Saturday] they weren’t. Our fourth line killed a lot of penalties, did all the work …”
Sturm added with his characteristic frankness, “We need the big guys to step up.”
“Yeah, tough game for us, flip the page and focus for today,” said Pastrnak. “Yeah, it was tough, obviously … we all saw it.”
“We knew it wasn’t good enough,” said Zacha, referring to his efforts in Denver. “The last two games weren’t good enough. We took a little step today toward being more effective, but there’s a lot of room for improvement, for sure.”
Pastrnak, one of the league’s elite goal scorers and the club’s top-paid performer, was back in the lineup Sunday night, along with Zacha, his fellow Czech. Sturm said he held blunt conversations with them during the day, in order to explain his decision-making process and let each know what he wants and expects out of them.
Clearly, Sturm figures a coddle-free approach is best, which is both rare and risky in today’s treat-the-working-help-with-velvet-gloves approach by most NHL coaches. He made the moves in hopes of lighting some fire in the belly of both forwards.
The inherent risk attached is that player ego plummets and performance remains flat or declines. Sturm essentially is setting a standard for both players, along with the rest of the roster. If you want to be in, then show it. If not, he’s not waiting around for the spirit to move you while points are being frittered away in the standings.
“We had some good conversations today,” Sturm said. “They know it and I give them my little sentence and what I want to see is a response today. We’re better than that. Yeah, it’s a working process — a lot of moving pieces, new coach, new system, I get all that — but we just have to find a way to get a buy-in as quick as possible.”
It is “always a tough conversation,” when delivering what the coach views as the truth about poor or insufficient play.
“No one wants to be scratched, right?” he said. “It’s always hard. But I look at this year’s schedule …”
Casey Mittelstadt was the one to be dealt Sturm’s stern hand here, the ex-Avalanche center told to take the night off. Marat Khusnutdinov filled his spot in the forward mix.
“Casey will not be the only guy that’s going to get scratched,” added Sturm. “There’s going to be a lot of other guys, too. I just want us to be fresh every time. We need everyone on board, we really do.”
Hampus Lindholm, who returned to the Bruins backline in Denver after a three-game absence because of injury, was held out of the lineup. Sturm said the veteran defenseman showed no ill effects from his return (20:44 time on ice) on Saturday, but the club felt it was prudent not to play him in back-to-back games, with under 24 hours to recover.
“We just want to be careful,” said Sturm, noting his plan going into Saturday’s game was that Lindholm likely would sit out Sunday. “Back-to-back games, after his injury, we just want to be careful.”
With Lindholm getting a rest, ex-Northeastern defenseman Jordan Harris returned to the blueline corps.
Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at kevin.dupont@globe.com.