The 2026-27 season is still young, with most teams having played just five games. The Boston Bruins just wrapped up their fifth game of the season Thursday night against the Utah Mammoth. They won that game 6-1.
However, they committed seven minor penalties. Yes, seven penalties in one game.
Penalty Woes
The Bruins have once again fallen to the plague of penalties. While the way the Bruins play with the aggressive forward-checking attack, this leads to the area where the Bruins commit more than average penalties.
Just last season, for comparison, the Bruins committed 373 penalties. In the first five games of this season, the Bruins have already committed 22 penalties, seven coming against the Mammoth.
Granted, they have only let up three goals on the penalty kill, they have not been able to score on the power play until Thursday night, when everything seemed to be going the Bruins' way.
Penalties are still an issue
As stated before, the Bruins committed seven penalties against the Mammoth. All seven were minor penalties, and three of the seven were committed by Will Borgen, who came over from the New York Islanders.
The main issue that comes around the idea of them committing all the penalties is that as soon of the penalty gets committed, they loss all the momentum they have gathered before that. If they are having a few great shifts where they are in the offensive zone and have the momentum or right after a goal, they get called for a penalty; they give all of that right back to the other team.
During the second period of the Utah Mammoth bout, the Bruins committed five of their seven penalties. Borgen committed three of those, one right after the other. He basically sat for six of the 20 minutes in the period, which could also affect his body.
The Bruins play physical, always have, always will; they just need to work on the aggression leading into penalties. They get carried away with the physicality rather than focusing on the cleanliness of the game.
Marco Sturm even mentioned how the penalty kill fell apart during the game against the Minnesota Wild, where the Bruins let up two goals after killing off a 5-on-3. While the Bruins have been excellent on the five-on-five, their power-play scoring needs work. They did manage to score three power-play goals against the Mammoth.
However, they are 3-for-16 on the season in terms of how many power plays they have gotten. On the plus side, they are 18-for-21 on the penalty kill, giving up just three penalty-kill goals, two of the three coming against the Wild, and the other coming against the Winnipeg Jets.
The Bruins have let up a short-handed goal against the Ottawa Senators, which they had not let up a short-handed goal in the first 25 games last season.
Looking to clean it up
There is still time for the Bruins to clean up their play, get back to their physicality, but also keep themselves out of the penalty box.
If they keep themselves out of the penalty box, they should be able to stay in games, as a big issue last season was that they gave up a ton of goals on the penalty kill but were unable to make it back up on the power play.
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