BOSTON — After his team followed its 4-0 loss in Nashville with a 5-2 defeat to Dallas at TD Garden, Jim Montgomery was frustrated.
The Bruins coach not only didn’t like the results, but was aggravated by his team’s approach and demeanor after eight games this season.
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“Our attitudes need to go in a better, healthier direction, as in trying to control what you control, which is trying to excel at your role,” he said. “Our attitudes are not in the moment. 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 pucks 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 to get to our team game is causing some struggles right now,” he added. “It’s very frustrating. There’s not much to say except it’s unacceptable and it’s throughout the lineup.”
The Bruins had another 21 giveaways in the game and their five penalties led to three power play goals by the Stars, who outshot Boston, 30-27.
“When you don’t work, what happens is your attitude starts to get more towards results and you forget how hard you need to work in this league,” Montgomery said. “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 and we’re on the wrong side right now and I think our attitudes are driving it.”
Bruins captain Brad Marchand, who two took of the five penalties and has yet to score a goal this season, shared his coach’s frustration after three straight games without a win.
“It’s a little bit of our own doing. We’re not taking care of pucks at the right time and obviously taking too many penalties. So there’s definitely areas we can clean up,” he said. “We can be cleaner on the breakouts and come together. Definitely, it’s of our own doing, which is a good thing, I guess, because we can rectify it. You know, we got to get back to playing the right way for 60 minutes and doing the right things all the time and understanding that, success is hard and we need to play a hard game to win. That’s how we’ve always won, and we just need to get back to that. So we’ll work on that tomorrow.”
