Bruins Fall 4-2 to Maple Leafs, ‘Not Good Enough’

BOSTON –– The Boston Bruins fell 4-2 to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Tuesday night at TD Garden.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t have it today,” head coach Marco Sturm said. “We can talk about whatever we want, but it was just overall, it unfortunately was not good enough.”

Elias Lindholm gave the Bruins a first-period lead with his second goal in two games and 14th of the season. Henri Jokiharju sprung the puck out of the defensive zone and up to Morgan Geekie, who knocked it over to Lindholm off the rush. The third-line center then wristed a laser past Toronto netminder Anthony Stolarz at 5:04 to make it 1-0.

“They play well. Obviously, this time of the year, you want to outwork the other team, and tonight they outworked us. It wasn’t good enough,” Lindholm said.

Geekie extended his point streak to three games with the helper on the scoring play; he has five assists through that stretch.

Toronto found the 1-1 equalizer with a short-handed tally from Matthew Knies at 7:27 of the middle frame. Max Domi later put the Maple Leafs up 2-1 with a backhanded shot on the power play at 18:08.

William Nylander widened the gap to open the third period, snapping one in at 3:00 for the 3-1 advantage. The Bruins’ power play, though, soon got to work and pulled them within one.

Pavel Zacha dished the puck over to Pastrnak in the right circle, where he unleashed a one-timer that Charlie McAvoy deflected in at 5:08 to make it 3-2. It was McAvoy’s 10th goal of the season, and extended Pastrnak’s point streak to 10 games with the assist.

“We’ve been playing really good, we just didn’t have it tonight,” McAvoy said. “I think we play, when we’re at our best, it’s just a really simple game. We transition really fast, and I think that allows us to have offense. And then playing behind teams – it’s been our thing.”

Knies’ empty-net goal with just over 30 seconds remaining in the game secured the victory for Toronto.

Jeremy Swayman started in his 48th game of the season and made 31 saves on 34 shots.

“We just have to play, first of all, play better in front of him. And also take care of playing good defense,” Sturm said. “Hopefully it’s going to be a little bit of a wake-up call.”

The Bruins are now on the road for the second game of a back-to-back against the Buffalo Sabres on Wednesday at KeyBank Center.

“That’s the best part of being in this league – you can redeem yourself the next day. It’s a big battle,” Nikita Zadorov said. “They are a good hockey team. We could possibly see them down the stretch in the playoffs, as well, so I think it’s a big divisional rivalry for us, for sure.”