3 Stars: Bruins back in mud with blowout loss to Sens

When the Bruins fought and clawed their way to a 3-2 win over the Avalanche, you couldn't help but think, "Man, this is exact kind of win this team needed."

It wasn't just about ending the six-game losing streak that Marco Sturm and the Bruins were trapped in, essentially doubling down on the erasure of a hot, 3-0-0 start behind the Boston bench. That was important, of course, but the manner in which the Bruins won felt important to their desired identity. The Bruins bent but didn't break. They played until they heard a whistle or horn, and it paid off, as made clear by Morgan Geekie's second-period strike. They even had a season-high 33 blocked shots. It was their way of overcoming the talent they lack compared to some of their peers in the NHL (especially a team like Colorado).

it was a win that felt like something the Bruins could carry into their next outing.

So long as their next outing wasn't a blowout loss, anyway. Well, about that.

In Ottawa for the first leg of a back-to-back, the Bruins were ambushed for a season-high seven goals against, four of which came in the third period.

"You gotta buy in or not," Sturm told NESN's Andy Brickley in a postgame interview aired on their postgame coverage. "That's right there. That's the difference. If you look at Ottawa, they do it, and we're not."

Here's a look at the 985TheSportsHub.com 3 Stars of the game...

One of five different Ottawa goal scorers in this contest, Giroux had a seemingly modest night with just one goal and three shots by the night's end.

But every time Giroux was out there, the Senators were pushing play towards Boston's zone. In his 14:30 of on ice five-on-five action, the Sens out-attempted the Bruins 18-6, outshot them 7-1, and outscored them 1-0. The Sens also out-chanced the Bruins 14-2 and held a 7-0 edge in high-danger scoring chances over that sample with Giroux out there. 

At 37, Giroux is clearing on the back nine of his career. But he'll still go down as one of the more productive B's killers of this era, as he is one of just six players to record at least 40 points against the Bruins since the start of the 2009-10 season. (The other five, in case you're wondering, are Steven Stamkos, Nicklas Backstrom, Alex Ovechkin, Mitch Marner, and Sidney Crosby.)

One of three Sens with three-point efforts in this one, Senators winger Drake Batherson had a knack for timely goals in this contest. It was Batherson who matched Geekie's game-opening tally with a power-play putaway on a Jeremy Swayman rebound in the first period, and it was Batherson who doubled Ottawa's lead with a period late in the second period of action.

In both instances, Batherson by all means snuck around the high-danger areas of the rink and let the play come to him. Poise and patience.

The Bruins entered the third period down but not out. But Senators center Tim Stützle made sure they were out early in the third period of this one.

It was Stützle who pushed Ottawa's lead to three with a power-play strike just five seconds into an early-period power-play chance with Nikita Zadorov in the box. And in the event that that wasn't enough, Stützle drew the penalty that put Ottawa back on the power play and scored once again, putting the Bruins in a four-goal hole that the club had no prayer of getting themselves out of.