Bruins Recap - Week Ending October 19th, 2025: Reality check

It's been a tale of two weeks for the Boston Bruins since their season began.

Since being 3-0-0 to start to the year with wins over Washington, Chicago (OT), and Buffalo - Boston has now lost four consecutive games to Tampa Bay, Vegas, Colorado, and Utah - all in regulation.

Now of course the days were numbered on the Bruins undefeated streak, and it certainly wasn't going to last all the way through a stretch of games against Tampa Bay at home, and then a tough western road trip against Vegas, Colorado, and Utah - including a back-to-back set against the Avalanche, and Mammoth just 22 hours apart.

As promising and feel good as Boston's start was, two of their three wins were against lowly opponents in Chicago, and Buffalo and it even took overtime for the Bruins to beat the Blackhawks in a game where Joonas Korpisalo stood on his head throughout the extra session.

Still wins are wins, and Boston deserves credit for taking care of business.

However, the curiosity this past week was to see if Boston's winning ways could continue against better competition and unfortunately the Bruins failed that test miserably.

Every loss was a different story.

Tampa Bay entered TD Garden hungry for their first win of the season and the Bruins weren't ready.

In what was an overall rough game for Charlie McAvoy, he got caught sleeping with the puck on his stick in the neutral zone minutes into the game and it wound up in the back of Boston's net.

Before anyone knew it, the Lightning held 3-0, and 4-1 leads before the Bruins finally woke up in the 2nd period and fought back to make it 4-3.

Boston controlled much of the play in the final 40 minutes but it was too little, too late.

Then it was off to Vegas where Boston learned from their mistake of not starting on time against Tampa Bay and got off to an early 1st period 1-0 lead on the Golden Knights.

Situational hockey hurt the Bruins in this game however.

After a Tanner Jeannot goal gave the Bruins the lead 2:05 into the game, Vegas came right back to tie it less than a minute and a half later.

Then when Nikita Zadorov scored late in the 1st period to give Boston a 2-1 lead, the Golden Knights again quickly answered a minute and a half later.

Good teams don't allow multiple leads to vanish immediately after gaining them.

It was after that when Boston didn't learn from the Tampa Bay game.

They eventually found themselves, yet again, in a three goal deficit.

To their credit they didn't give up, but it was again too little too late.

Against the Avalanche it looked like varsity versus junior varsity.

Colorado's speed and skill advantage was painfully evident and they cruised their way to a 4-1 victory outshooting Boston 38-14 along the way.

The Bruins played well enough through most of the 1st period and even got out to another early lead off of a great shot pass from McAvoy to John Beecher who was making his season debut.

Unfortunately a bad neutral zone turnover from David Pastrnak led right to a Nathan Mackinnon tying goal, and then Casey Mittelstadt lost a clean defensive zone face off to Gabriel Landeskog late in the 1st period that directly led to Colorado's eventual game winning goal.

The Avalanche seized all momentum at that time and from the 2nd period onward it was all Colorado despite the score still being 2-1 entering the 3rd period.

In the 3rd Pastrnak again turned the puck over, this time in the offensive zone, and then lost his assignment in the defensive zone allowing Mackinnon to wire home his 2nd goal of the game and effectively put the game out of reach for an offensively troubled Bruins team.

Boston's loss to Utah was a frustrating one since they played pretty well throughout and held a 2-1 lead late into in the 2nd period.

Henri Jokiharju got caught running around out of position on a 4-on-4 situation in the defensive zone which led to Clayton Keller's tying goal, and then didn't defend the slot well enough to challenge Dylan Guenther on his eventual game winning goal in the 3rd period after a Marat Khusnutdinov turnover.

Ultimately when it comes to the Bruins, there's simply a talent deficiency.

Too many guys are being asked to produce at a level they either have never done before, or haven't done consistently throughout their career.

Teams that lack proper depth and talent have a much thinner margin of error.

Unfortunately, Boston's schedule doesn't get any easier this week facing Florida, Colorado, and an up and coming Anaheim team at home.

The Bruins are going to have to find a way to win at least two of these games because if they don't it could end up being a scary October for the black and gold.