( Photo Credit: Rob Gray / Imagn Images )

By: Declan Flavin | Follow me on Twitter / X @FlavinDeclan

The Boston Bruins losing to the Utah Mammoth on Sunday night continues a losing streak that is now at four games, and the morale of the team is definitely being tested. The biggest test for this team concerns defensive issues, which the Bruins struggled with for most of last season.

Frankly, there have been far too many occurrences already that portray Bruins defenders as players just going through the motions. With the defensive pairings filled with objectively talented players who are intentional about their preparation, these type of breakdowns have become increasingly confounding. The same type of confounding play that had many fans wondering what would come of the team last season, and there are numbers to back it up from our own Eamonn McLean.

This stat is a perfect representation of the work in progress that the more important half of the team has been. When the defense isn’t there for the recent iterations of the Bruins, it has frequently been tied to imbalances on the other side of the ice.

The team’s ideal approach, above all, to put it simply, is to limit opponents’ chances while getting enough for themselves on offense. Instead, it’s been this reality of the complete opposite, with chances abounding for each team and not much going on for the Bruins’ attack, which makes the games that much more painful to sit through. Then, when a fan takes a step back and analyzes that this repetitive dynamic has been through both an interim and official head coach, the recent games can lead someone down a path of disappointment and dismissal.

But, of course, Head Coach Marco Sturm is as aware of this situation as anybody else, and he will have the time to get the team to clean things up in the important areas. He is a first-time leader of a team, and with some defensive players now having a built-up history of falling short in consistently delivering stout play in front of their own net, Sturm deserves time to make his impact.

The possibility is always there with the defensive core, and with the support of the two-way forwards that the Bruins can have, it’s just the fact that it’s still taking this long to see everything come together. Whether the collective puts these things together ultimately will be up to the fans to think about and talk over until then. For now, though, the cooler mind will probably realize that patience will need to be exercised, and that will be a common theme for an organizational situation that not many are used to.