Struggling Bruins finding themselves in unfamiliar territory under Jim Montgomery

The Bruins are no strangers to falling into ruts under Jim Montgomery’s watch.

But it’s never happened when leaves are still clinging onto branches before the winter chill sets in.

During Boston’s record-setting 2022-23 campaign, the Bruins opened the year 17-2-0 entering Thanksgiving week.

The following year? A revamped roster featuring several bargain-bin signings went 14-1-3 over a similar stretch.

Expectations were even higher this year, especially after Boston seemingly bolstered its roster by signing top offseason targets like Elias Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov.

But those elevated expectations haven’t translated into results. Through eight games, Boston sits at just 3-4-1 — with repeated miscues and lapses in execution hampering a rudderless roster out of the gate.

“This is a bit of new territory for us to have this happening to us early in the year, after these last couple years where we were just gangbusters,” Charlie McAvoy said after Boston’s 5-2 loss to the Stars on Thursday. “But I think a little bit of our attitude is it hasn’t won us anything being the best team in October.”

McAvoy’s sentiment is correct as far as the hollow victories secured by strong starts in the fall.

Boston’s last two seasons still ended in the same frustrating fashion via playoff exits doled out by the Panthers.

The 2022-23 Panthers sat at 16-17-4 at the end of December before sneaking into the playoffs and going on a Cup run.

Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers were 5-12-1 in mid-November before righting the ship en route to their own title pursuit last season.

Of course, the 2023-24 Bruins also don’t have the luxury of having players like McDavid in place to right the ship.

And if the current roster assembled by Don Sweeney and Co. want to turn things around, they’re going to have to snap this cycle of losing hockey that has permeated across multiple games.

Despite Montgomery’s emphasis Thursday morning on taking care of the puck and limiting penalties, that message didn’t resonate on the ice later that evening.

Even though Boston and Dallas entered the first intermission locked in a 1-1 draw, the Bruins were knocked for a whopping 13 giveaways over those 20 minutes. Dallas had just two turnovers over that same stretch.

After relinquishing six penalties in Tuesday’s road loss in Nashville, Boston was sent to the sin bin five more times on Thursday — leading to three power-play tallies from Dallas.

And with Boston’s 5-on-5 scoring still stuck in a rut, any sizable deficit was going to be nearly impossible to climb out of.

“Our attitudes need to go in a better, healthier direction,. … Our attitudes are not in the moment,” Montgomery noted. “They’re on results. And when your attitude is on results, you tend to take too many penalties because you get frustrated quickly, and you tend to turn over the puck a lot, because you don’t want to work for the offense.

“You want results right away. And that attitude of not willing to work for what we want to get and get to our team game is causing some struggles right now.”

With a matchup against the Maple Leafs set for Saturday night on Causeway Street, the Bruins need to stem the tide in short order.

Shaking up the roster might be the next order of business, be it creating cap space to sign Tyler Johnson or calling up a promising playmaker like Fabian Lysell.

But if the usual suspects in Boston’s room don’t remedy their recent trends of taking penalties and settling for low-danger shots, the Bruins’ current venture into unfamiliar territory could lead to further disaster as the calendar flips to winter.

“A lot of the mistakes that we’re making and the reasons that we feel we’re losing is because of our lack of respect for the game and consistency and details and on,” Brad Marchand said. “Those are things you can fix.

“When you have a lack of effort and guys just don’t care, that’s a whole different issue. That’s not what we have. … We’ll be alright.”

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