Boston Bruins
“Our top guys were not the top guys again.”
Marco Sturm had seen enough this weekend.
After another extended stretch on Saturday where the Bruins’ top-six unit was routinely outclassed by the Avalanche’s big guns, Sturm opted to staple two of his top forwards in David Pastrnak and Pavel Zacha to the bench.
Pastrnak did not play the final 7:55 of Boston’s eventual 4-1 loss to Colorado, while Zacha logged just one shift over the last 11 minutes of the loss.
“Our top guys were not the top guys again,” Sturm said postgame. “If you look at Colorado and our team, well, that’s the difference.”
It’s hard to argue against the bench boss’ musings. While Colorado’s top line of Nathan MacKinnon, Martin Necas, and Artturi Lehkonen generated three of their team’s four goals and peppered Jeremy Swayman with 16 shots, Boston’s top forward trio of Pastrnak, Zacha, and Elias Lindholm generated just one shot on goal.
“Just didn’t play good enough,” Sturm further elaborated on Sunday evening. “That was the only reason. I said it yesterday, our best players need to be best, and I thought yesterday they weren’t. Our fourth line, again, they killed a lot of penalties, did all the work. So now we need the big guys to step up, and that was the only reason.”
Sturm continued to send a message ahead of Sunday’s road bout against the Utah Mammoth.
Casey Mittelstadt — who opened the year as Boston’s second-line center — was deemed a healthy scratch.
A key player in Boston’s hopes of generating some semblance of consistent 5-on-5 offense in the middle-six grouping, Mittelstadt didn’t attempt a shot on Saturday against Colorado.
“I told the guys before, and it’s not just — Casey was okay. Do we need more from him? Yes. But there’s a lot of other guys too, trust me,” Sturm said pregame of the decision to scratch Mittelstadt.
The good news on Sunday? Pastrnak responded to Sturm’s benching and public challenge.
Boston’s best offensive conduit did his part to help Boston end their three-game trek out West with at least a point in the standings — scoring a pair of goals against the Mammoth.
But in some respects, Sunday’s showing in Salt Lake City was perhaps the most sobering result of the entire road trip.
Because, even on a night where Boston’s star player in Pastrank delivered, it wasn’t enough for the Bruins to come away with points on the board.
Once again, a Bruins team that seemingly doesn’t have the horses to consistently generate offense beyond Pastrnak and an overperforming bottom-six unit came up short to Utah, 3-2, en route to a fourth-straight loss and an 0-3 showing on the road trip.
“Tough to comment on it after game like this,” Pastrnak said of breaking through with his pair of goals. “Obviously, I’d rather get a win. It’s nice, but never feels good when you lose.”
As reassuring as it was for Pastrnak to deliver offensively with a 5-on-5 and power-play tally against the Mammoth, it shouldn’t necessarily come as much of a surprise that a talent who posted 106 points on a cellar-dwelling squad last year was inevitably going to produce.
For Sturm, the more concerning question is when the rest of Boston’s forwards are also going to pull their weight.
Entering the year, the Bruins were banking on at least some semblance of steady production from their top line of Pastrnak, Geekie, and Lindholm.
But, through seven games and 64:07 of 5-on-5 ice time together, the Geekie-Lindholm-Pastrnak line has only been on the ice together for one 5-on-5 goal scored — and three allowed.
Sturm’s reshuffling on Sunday also did little to spark Boston’s stop-and-start second line. Even with Marat Khusnutdinov pushed back into the starting lineup as a speedy winger alongside Zacha and Viktor Arvidsson, that trio was outshot, 8-2, and outscored, 1-0, in just 7:28 of 5-on-5 ice time together.
It’s been a prolonged stretch of offensively futility further up on Boston’s depth chart — a tangible result that most feared would be the Bruins’ greatest flaw entering the 2025-26 season.
Perhaps reassured by Pastrnak’s play or what stood as Boston’s third one-goal loss amid this extended losing stretch, Sturm preached positivity after Sunday’s setback.
“We’re still an okay spot,” Sturm said. “Yes, four losses in a row. Of course, it [doesn’t] sounds great. But we played some really good hockey games. We came out here West. It’s not easy, too. So now it’s time to go home and reset and keep working on those things.”
Yes, the Bruins may not be getting routinely run out of the building, as was the case last year.
But some of that also might be a byproduct of both Swayman and Joonas Korpisalo keeping Boston off the ropes, rather than the Bruins actually submitting a more competitive effort — especially on the offensive end.
Through seven games, the Bruins rank last in the NHL in 5-on-5 high-danger scoring chances generated by 60 minutes of play — at just 7.45. They’ve generated five shots on goal or fewer in the third period three times already.
And that’s with Pastrnak still scoring four goals and eight points over those seven games.
The Bruins still have an elite offensive talent in Pastrnak.
But after that, Sturm is still searching for answers.
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