When the Bruins hit the ice against the Carolina Hurricanes on Tuesday night, Oct. 27, Boston will be sitting at 9-2-1 - a start few would have predicted before the 2026-27 NHL season opened. Even less expected: Morgan Geekie has only one goal through those first 12 games.
That dry spell hasn’t gone unnoticed, but Marco Sturm isn’t making it into a bigger issue. After Monday’s practice at Warrior Ice Arena, the Bruins coach backed his second-line winger and treated the slow start like what it is - a rough patch for a scorer trying to find his rhythm.
“Every forward, every goal scorer needs to feel good. If you’re not scoring, then you get a little tight,'' said Sturm perJack Studley of Boston Hockey Now.
"That’s absolutely normal. With him, just for example, the other night, he had some really good looks on the power play.
He just missed the net. Last year it went in.
So that’s the fine line, and that’s something you just need to continue to work on and you got to work through it. That’s just part of being a goal scorer."
The chances are there for Geekie. That’s part of what makes this kind of stretch so maddening: the looks are coming, but the finish isn’t. Even elite scorers go through it, and David Pastrnak has dealt with similar spells before, kept shooting, and eventually broke through again.
For now, Boston can absorb the skid because its younger group has done serious damage through 12 games. James Hagens, Fraaser Minten, and Matthew Poitras have given the Bruins offense a major lift from the bottom and middle of the lineup.
The bigger picture for Boston is simple enough: once Geekie starts converting again, the attack gets deeper. Sturm seems to know that a rebound is coming, and the cleanest adjustment may be as basic as trusting the shot a little more on the power play instead of always trying to make the extra pass. Get enough pucks there, and eventually one of them goes in.
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Marat Khusnutdinov is now locked in for the long haul after signing a three-year contract extension, giving the Bruins one less item to worry about as they move deeper into the season. The last game also offered a boost in net, where Michael DiPietro picked up his first NHL shutout, the kind of performance that can quiet a few questions and give a club some extra confidence before heading on the road. [Read more 🡒]