Bruins Notes: Jim Montgomery Calls Out Boston’s Need For Healthier Attitude

BOSTON — The Bruins cannot get out of their own way.

Thursday’s 5-2 loss to the Dallas Stars marked a third consecutive defeat for the Bruins with another round of self-inflicted errors. Boston logged five penalties that led to three power-play goals for Dallas, all of which came in a row to open the second period.

Jim Montgomery sat at the podium after the game with a clear message for where his team must improve after a 3-4-1 start.

“It’s quite significant, but our attitudes need to go in a better, healthier direction,” Montgomery told reporters. “Try to control what you can control. Try and excel at your role. Our attitudes are not in the moment, they’re on results.”

Montgomery continued: “When your attitude is on results, you tend to take too many penalties because you get frustrated quickly. You tend to turn the puck over a lot because you don’t want to work for the offense. You want results right away. That attitude of not willing to work for what we want to get to our team game is causing some struggles right now.”

Montgomery visibly lit into the team during a timeout in the second period to set up a penalty kill attempt, focusing on simplifying a physical approach. Finding consistency in attitudes will be a priority for the Bruins in the coming days.

“When you don’t work, what happens is your attitude starts to get more toward results,” Montgomery added. “You forget how hard you need to work in this league. If you’re not focused on habits and details, you’re going to get frustrated and the margins of error aren’t very big in this league. We’re on the wrong side right now and I think our attitudes are driving it.”

Boston captain Brad Marchand called upon himself and other Bruins veterans to properly lead the way through the difficult stretch.

“It’s a little bit of our own doing,” Marchand told reporters. “We’re not taking care of pucks at the right time. We’re taking too many penalties. There’s definitely areas that we can clean up. … We gotta get back to playing the right way for 60 minutes and doing the right things all the time. Understanding that success is hard and we need to play a hard game to win. That’s how we’ve always won.”

“We don’t like these results,” Charlie McAvoy told reporters. “We’re acknowledging that. It’s different from what we’ve had in the past where we’ve come out running and gunning.”

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Here are more notes from Thursday’s Stars-Bruins game:

— Boston’s allowed 11 penalties over the last two games, “taxing” the penalty-kill unit that entered Thursday’s as the eight-best unit in the NHL. The Bruins have work to do to restore that production.

— In addition to scoring three straight power-play goals to open the second period, the Stars ripped the tempo away from the Bruins with a 13-5 shot advantage in the middle 20 minutes on Thursday night.

— Dallas forward and former Boston star Tyler Seguin found the back of the net on Thursday night for his eighth career goal against the Bruins.

— With numerous man-advantages to defend, Jeremy Swayman allowed four or more goals for the third time this season.

— NESN aired its first hockey installment of “Unobstructed Views” on NESN+ with Andrew Raycroft joined by former Bruins champions Patrice Bergeron and Tuukka Rask.

— The Bruins return to action on Saturday night in the season’s first rematch of the previous first-round playoff series against the Toronto Maple Leafs. Puck drop is set for 7 p.m. ET at TD Garden. You can catch the game, plus an hour of pregame coverage, on NESN.