Between extended rest days from game action and the general way that the vibes have historically gone in the rivalry, the Boston Bruins lost, 5-2, to the Montréal Canadiens on Thursday.
The Habs snapped Boston’s seven-game winning streak on home ice at TD Garden, while David Pastrňák’s 14-game point steak against the Canadiens came to an end too.
Boston is now 13-5-1 (27 points) on the season and fell to third place in the Atlantic Division, while the Tampa Bay Lightning and Canadiens jumped ahead with Montréal’s victory.
The Lightning are 13-4-2 (28 points) to Montréal’s 12-3-4 record. The Bolts’ 11 regulation wins outweighs the Habs’ eight in the tiebreaker as both Tampa and Montréal have each played 19 games this season.
The Bruins and Canadiens were clad in their Hometown Remix uniforms Thursday night— the first HTR vs. HTR match of the season across the entire NHL.
Unfortunately for Boston, wearing a primarily brown jersey reverted them back to their inaugural season, when the Bruins went 6-24-0 in 1924-25.
Boston went on to have a minus-70 goal differential and only 49 goals for that season. Thankfully, the 2025-26 Bruins have found the net a few more times this season (70 GF, plus-24 DIFF) and also play 84 games nowadays, not 30.
In the meantime, I’m writing this on an iPad and did some recent aesthetic upgrades to DTFR behind the scenes, so there are bound to be typos before I can get back on a desktop and perform editing duties.
Coach says my laptop is “day-to-day” with a battery injury. Let’s hope it doesn’t get put on the injured reserve.
It feels like the Bruins have had it too good for too long against the Canadiens, though in the last couple of seasons, the tides have been turning.
Just off the top of my head, it seems like the home team loses more often than the road team when these two teams meet in the regular season dating back to about 2024-25.
Feel free to check that in your own time and only let me know if I’m right.
The Habs are further along in their youth movement and development— it only makes sense that Boston would end up being caught behind the play, but this many times?
It’s also important to remember that these are the top-two teams in the Atlantic Division. One of them made the Eastern Conference Final last spring and it wasn’t the Bruins.
Just like Boston’s effort against the Carolina Hurricanes earlier this season, Thursday night’s game was a measuring stick. Can you keep up with legitimate contenders? Can you prove that you’re making forward progress?
It’s a reality check.
Yes, this Bruins team is still figuring themselves out. Yes, they’re going to lose games. Yes, some of them are going to be bad.
Yes, Casey Mittelstadt— whose two goals were the only bright spot for Boston— should probably get a reasonable extension. Yes, you should still trade Pavel Zacha by the trade deadline.
It’s all about how you bounce back. Resiliency is more than just a buzzword you’ll hear all season.
Montréal blew a, 4-0, lead with 2:40 remaining in regulation to the Winnipeg Jets and lost, 5-4, in overtime earlier this season.
The Jets were resilient. Yes, even Winnipeg— who have since found themselves trending in the exact opposite of how they began the season— could pull off an improbable comeback against the Canadiens.
Montréal, meanwhile, was resilient by absolving that the stunning defeat against the Jets would be the only time they lose like that this season— possibly ever.
In the meantime, let’s have a quick chat about some of the takeaways from Boston’s loss Thursday.
Cole Caufield was always going to score a goal against Boston. Does the name “Thomas Vanek” ring a bell?
Vanek spent the majority of his Bruins-killing career with the Buffalo Sabres (later playing for Montréal and others as well) and he always scored against the B’s.
Caufield, like Vanek, always scores against Boston. He even has 11 goals in 12 games against Jeremy Swayman.
That’s not to say that Swayman is fully off the hook as one of the two breakaway goals by Montréal may have been salvageable, but it is to say that Caufield was totally going to score at least once in the game.
As for Swayman, who usually excels in the pseudo shootout atmosphere of a breakaway, it was just that kind of a night.
Charlie McAvoy screened his own goaltender on the first goal against. Will Borgen and Mason Lohrei were caught doing whatever they were doing in the second.
Unlike a decent stretch of the season so far, Thursday night was very much not Lohrei’s night. Let’s hope that trend doesn’t continue, lest he need an “observation game” night off to reset.
One thing that went well through 40 minutes was the fact that Boston didn’t completely unravel and become undisciplined.
You can have games that suck from time-to-time, but remaining composed just enough to keep it from getting completely away from you is crucial to the long-term development in a period of transition.
Of course, I wrote that down in my notes then someone (*ahem* Mittelstadt) took a penalty for retaliating later in the third period and I guess you can cancel that extension for now.
Yes, even in spite of the fact that he scored his second goal of the game 52 seconds into the final frame— bringing Boston to within three and giving me hope for a Winnipeg-style (but with way more time on the clock) comeback.
Anyway, Michael DiPietro gave up a one-timer goal in relief of Swayman and looked pretty resilient himself after initially giving me a heart attack.
Part of me wonders why Boston didn’t start DiPietro against Montréal given Swayman’s recent struggles in the second and third consecutive starts that he’s had for the last couple of weeks.
Sometimes it’s just a stretch. Sometimes it makes more sense to not mess with the rotation as Swayman and DiPietro had been getting every other game lately and neither looked out of place against one opponent or the other.
The Minnesota Wild are up next for the Bruins on Saturday, so you’d have to think— based on how the meeting in Minnesota went earlier in October and the fact that the Los Angeles Kings visit Boston on Tuesday— that Swayman gets the next start and DiPietro gets the Kings.
Well, from a common sense “Minnesota is a good team and will be starting their starter, most likely, while Los Angeles is not very good” factor anyway.
It seems like it’d be a layup for DiPietro against the Kings after giving Swayman a chance to bounce back from an early exit (and too much rest otherwise).
Anyway, throw this one against the Habs out.
Don’t forget that the effort needs to be adjusted from the start and that the final result was the final result, but I wouldn’t chalk up too many sports talk radio talking points for one lousy game.
Yes, you’re going to need to be better as a team, obviously.
I’d rather have losses against Carolina and Montréal early in the year as learning points than costly errors when it’s crunch time and you can’t afford to lose.
Young players like Fraser Minten and Marat Khusnutdinov have plenty of time to heat up between now and the rest of the season’s meetings, while older players like Pastrňák and Morgan Geekie should exemplify why an effort like Thursday is unacceptable at the NHL level— especially if the overarching plan is to start competing for the Cup in another two or three years.
This season is still a transition, though it should be on the upswing.
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