{"id":544726,"date":"2026-03-25T17:13:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T17:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/544726\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T17:13:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T17:13:12","slug":"road-will-only-get-harder-for-bruins-after-embarrassing-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/544726\/","title":{"rendered":"Road will only get harder for Bruins after ’embarrassing’ loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBoston Bruins\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t“You get spoiled by our goalies. Hopefully it’s going to be a little bit of a wakeup call.”<\/p>\n

\"Boston
\n\tMarco Sturm and the Bruins let two points slip away on Tuesday against Toronto. (Barry Chin\/Globe Staff\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBy Conor Ryan<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMarch 25, 2026 | 7:36 AM\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

4 minutes to read<\/p>\n

COMMENTARY <\/p>\n

Bruins<\/a> GM Don Sweeney expressed confidence in his club prior to Tuesday\u2019s home matchup against the cellar-dwelling Maple Leafs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were happy and grateful for keeping this group together and not worrying about picking up an extra [draft] pick,\u201d Sweeney said Tuesday of Boston\u2019s decision not to sell off pieces at the trade deadline. \u201cAll the guys in here have contributed to our success thus far, and the staff wants to see that through. We believe we\u2019re a playoff team.\u201d<\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t look like it on Tuesday night against Toronto.<\/p>\n

In a grueling playoff push all across the Eastern Conference, Tuesday represented a well-earned reprieve for Marco Sturm and his club.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fresh off of arguably their biggest win of the season on Saturday in a critical road victory against the Red Wings<\/a>, the Bruins returned home \u2014 where they boasted a 26-9-1 record \u2014 to take on a tanking Maple Leafs crew.<\/p>\n

Two points were seemingly well within the Bruins\u2019 grasp, especially against a Toronto team both playing without captain Auston Matthews and mired in a 2-8-4 slump since returning from the Olympic break.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Instead, the Bruins left their home ice with zero points to show for against one of the few \u201ctomato cans\u201d left in an otherwise brutal stretch to close out the 2025-26 campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought we tried our best to talk about it before the game, what this spot would be like: Coming off a really emotional win and playing against a team that obviously is not in the spot that we\u2019re in,\u201d Charlie McAvoy said postgame after Boston\u2019s 4-2 loss to Toronto<\/a>. \u201cWe talked about it all day today that we couldn\u2019t show up flat, and we still did. So, yeah, it just wasn\u2019t good enough for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

As much as Boston\u2019s loss to the Leafs prevented Toronto from inching closer to a top-five pick in the upcoming draft (transferring the pick back to Toronto instead of Boston), zero points secured was still a brutal setback for Sturm\u2019s club.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole game was full of disappointment,\u201d Sturm said, adding, \u201cI think [Jeremy] Swayman was pretty much the only guy \u2013 I think he played. Other than that, you can pick areas, you can pick players, we just didn\u2019t bring it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, Swayman was one of the few positives for the Bruins on Tuesday. Despite Boston\u2019s current back-to-back slate between Toronto and Buffalo on Wednesday night, Sturm opted to roll with Swayman again on Tuesday in hopes of banking some valuable points.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Swayman held up his end of the bargain, stopping 31 of 34 shots. Even with three goals allowed, it was a testament to the porous play in front of Boston\u2019s netminder that he still closed out the night with 1.35 goals saved above expected (per MoneyPuck<\/a>).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Against a seemingly punchless Toronto offense, the Bruins regularly coughed up pucks and relinquished several odd-man rushes and other quality looks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been spoiled [by our goalies],\u201d Sturm acknowledged. \u201cEven the games we won, if you look at the expected goals against, it was a little bit high. You get spoiled by our goalies. Hopefully it\u2019s going to be a little bit of a wakeup call.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLike today, you can\u2019t give up over 10 odd-man rushes against. You just can\u2019t. Two is already a lot in a game. I think we had 12 today. That says it all how our game was today.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bruins weren\u2019t much better down the other end of the ice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were OK in the first,\u201d Elias Lindholm said. \u201cThe second period, our power play was terrible. It killed the momentum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boston only cashed in on one of its five power-play bids on Tuesday, while also giving up a shorthanded tally to Matthew Knies in the second period.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Special-team woes plagued Boston throughout the night. A costly five-minute major penalty for boarding assessed against Nikita Zadorov (with Henri Jokiharju already in the sin bin) led to a power-play tally from Toronto\u2019s Max Domi.<\/p>\n

Less than 10 seconds after Zadorov\u2019s major penalty expired, William Nylander scored to give Toronto a 3-1 edge just three minutes into the third period.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDidn\u2019t have emotions against the Toronto Maple Leafs,\u201d Zadorov acknowledged. \u201cThat\u2019s on us for sure. We gotta be better than that. It\u2019s important points for us at home, and to drop it like this, it\u2019s embarrassing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Letdown showings \u2014 even against seemingly tanking opponents \u2014 inevitably arise over the course of a long season.<\/p>\n

Still, the Bruins don\u2019t exactly have the luxury of letting even a point or two slip away from them \u2014 not in this relentless playoff race.<\/p>\n

Boston might still sit in the first wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference<\/a> with 86 points. But both the red-hot Ottawa Senators and New York Islanders sit right behind them with 85 points apiece. The Red Wings? 84 points.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not going to get any easier for the Bruins.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not banking any points against a dreadful Toronto could come back to bite Boston in the coming days, given that the Bruins are staring at an uphill climb over the next few weeks.<\/p>\n

Boston is right back at it on Wednesday, closing out a back-to-back slate on the road against a Sabres team that is 33-6-3 in their last 42 games.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After that?\u00a0<\/p>\n

A home game against a talented Minnesota Wild team (92 points) on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A road game on the second leg of a back-to-back against a scorching Blue Jackets team on Sunday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A home game against one of the top teams in the league in the Stars (97 points) on March 31.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Points will be hard to come by, to say the least. Which makes Tuesday\u2019s no-show performance even more disheartening for a Bruins team whose playoff hopes are still far from being realized.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\"Profile\t<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Conor Ryan is a staff writer covering the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox for Boston.com, a role he has held since 2023.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for the Today newsletter<\/p>\n

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