Bruins Notes: Jim Montgomery Not Worried After Boston’s First Loss

After three consecutive wins for the Boston Bruins to kick off their 2022-23 season, the Ottawa Senators delivered a dominant offensive showing from start to finish Tuesday, attacking Boston’s defense on a night where both teams combined to score 12 goals.

While first-period scoring became an ongoing trend for the Bruins in their previous three contests, the Senators took a page from that playbook, scoring three straight in back-to-back periods against Boston at Canadian Tire Centre.

Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery highlighted the key factors in the team’s first loss of their new campaign while also acknowledging a few positive takeaways from the offensive end.

“Well, our checking, I guess the best word to describe it was atrocious,” Montgomery said, as seen on NESN’s postgame coverage. “We were on the wrong side of pucks, we weren’t coming back hard enough. We left our goalie out to dry. We didn’t protect the net-front.”

While the defensive results didn’t fall in the Bruins’ favor, Boston did show some fight on the offensive end. The Bruins assembled a four-goal second period to keep the game competitive throughout the night.

“We were resilient,” Montgomery said. “We never stopped playing. There’s no quit in that dressing room. And it’s a fun group to work with because they’re always trying to do their best and move forward as a group. … We can clean up, we’ll get better at checking, I have no worries about that. But you can’t put a fight in a tiger and we got a lot of tiger in us right now.”

One of Boston’s five scorers, right wing David Pastrnak, shared a similar optimistic takeaway from the loss. The 26-year-old veteran has now scored in three out of the season’s four total games.

“We kept it positive, we came back twice,” Pastrnak said, as seen on NESN’s postgame coverage. “Unfortunately, the last goal kinda put the dagger in us. Unfortunately, it’s a tough loss. Pretty happy with the way we battled. … We came back twice.”

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Here are more notes from Tuesday’s Bruins-Senators game:

— Patrice Bergeron, who netted Boston’s first goal of the game, became the third all-time goals leader in Bruins history with his 403rd career with the organization. Bergeron passed Rick Middleton.

— A.J. Greer scored his third goal of the season, which served as both a game-tying goal and a new career-high for the first-year Bruins left wing.

— Nick Foligno, who played in 64 games with the Bruins last season, matched last year’s total after scoring his second goal in four games played.

— The Bruins allowed a season-high seven goals to the Senators.

— The Bruins will look to get back in the win column Thursday when they return to Boston to take on the Anaheim Ducks. Puck drop from TD Garden is set for 7 p.m. ET, and you can watch the game, along with an hour of pregame and postgame coverage live on NESN.