Bruins Fall 5-2 to the Canadiens, ‘Hopefully a Good Lesson’

BOSTON –– It was not the Boston Bruins’ night on Thursday at TD Garden.

The group fell 5-2 to the Montreal Canadiens in the first of four matchups between the Atlantic Division opponents.

“Hopefully a good lesson,” head coach Marco Sturm said. “We always talk about how hard this league is and especially a rivalry like this, a game like that, Montreal at home. And we were just very flat.”

The Bruins got out to a slow start, falling behind 5-0 by the 14:15 mark of the middle frame. Kirby Dach and Josh Anderson scored for Montreal in the first period, before Jake Evans, Cole Caufield and Phillip Danault extended the gap in the second.​

“It’s something we’ve been struggling with the whole season, but we were able to come [back] in the games and overall end up winning, so kind of forget about the bad starts,” David Pastrnak said. “But against a team like Montreal, it’s unacceptable to start like that. It’s on us players. Take the responsibility.”

Michael DiPietro relieved Jeremy Swayman in net after Caufield’s tally made it 4-0 at 8:14.

“You never want to do that, and you care so much,” Swayman said. “I trust Marco 100%, his decisions, and I think at that time, that was the right call. I think we responded well and, as you could tell, we had a good push. So whatever it takes for us to get that push is what we needed.”

Swayman’s teammates took the blame.

“It’s definitely not on Sway. It was just bad plays in front of the net, some breakaways,” Frederic Brunet said. “We’ve got to be better for him. He’s been saving games for us, and I think he deserved better.”

Casey Mittelstadt got Boston on the board off a two-on-one rush with linemate Elias Lindholm. Nikita Zadorov pushed it up to Lindholm from the defensive end, and the center dished the puck to Mittelstadt, who pulled it to his backhand and tucked past Montreal goalie Jacob Fowler at 14:53 of the second.​

“We know they’re a good team, and we’ve got to be ready to go. I think we kind of buried ourselves and obviously tried to fight back, but probably too little too late,” Mittelstadt said.

It marked Mittelstadt’s sixth goal of the season, and extended Lindholm’s point streak to five games. The duo got back to it in the third, pulling the Bruins within three just 53 seconds into the period.

Lindholm collected a loose puck in the slot from Will Borgen’s initial shot and shoveled it on net, where Mittelstadt was stationed to whack in the rebound and make it 5-2 for his second tally of the game and seventh of the year.

It proved to be not enough, though, as Montreal skated away with the two points.

“You’re going to have games like this; it’s a long year, but you want to at least find your game and feel good heading into the next one. You don’t want it to carry over,” Mittelstadt said. “I think that we did some good things maybe later in the game in the second and third, but at the same time, it's a big match for us and a big rivalry – we’d like to be ready to go and have a better night.”

The B’s will look to bounce back on Saturday when they host the Minnesota Wild for a 7 p.m. matchup.