The Boston Bruins are starting to look like the team that stumbled into vacation last spring. The front office sold fans on them being much more competitive this season, and for the first couple of games they were. However, things have been trending in the wrong direction in recent games, and Monday night was the worst loss of the season.
The Ottawa Senators dominated the Bruins, scoring four goals on the power play and making some of Boston's biggest stars look average. It's going to start to get very hard to find a bright spot if the Bruins continue losing games in this kind of fashion, but one of the team's goal scorers on Monday night does give us some reason to be content.
Morgan Geekie was one Bruins bright spot in loss to Senators
At the beginning of the season, as the Bruins got out to their hot start, there were some concerns that Morgan Geekie's scoring luck from last season was experiencing some regression. He was missing opportunities from David Pastrnak that always ended up in the back of the net last season, which was one of the concerns about signing last year's breakout star to a big deal.
The Bruins may have lost seven of their past eight games, but Geekie has been on a hot streak. He has goals in four straight games, and six goals and one assist over the losing stretch. The run has put him on pace to finish the year with 49 goals.
The front office can't afford to take another loss this season. If Geekie had gone back to his old goalscoring outputs and ended up not able to play in the top six, there might not have been too many people happy about paying him $5.5 million for the next six years.
When Marco Sturm demoted Geekie to the second line before he caught fire, I thought it was going to be the beginning of his fall down the lineup without being able to play with Pastrnak. Credit to Geekie, he made the most out of a bad situation and earned the right to go back to the first line with Pastrnak and Elias Lindholm. He has been thriving ever since.