At this point in the season, with the start of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs officially less than a month away, there’s really no final result that should shake the foundation of your feelings about this Bruins team and what they may or may not do when the postseason begins.

By now, they are what they are. And, you know what, that’s for the most part been a damn good thing. The fact that this team, which lost every free agent and made bargain-bin additions as a result of a failed all-in year a season ago, is in legitimate contention for the Presidents’ Trophy simply confirms as much. But they are also an obviously flawed team in a league full of similarly flawed teams, and those flaws do creep to the surface every now and then. A bit more often lately than in, say, January. Of course. And though I don’t have the exact stat handy, but I believe the season has now ended after every single regular-season loss.

Nobody’s saying anything new — or even anything that I’d consider mildly interesting — when it comes to their playoff fate.

But there is something to be said about the Bruins’ latest setback, which has given them back-to-back regulation losses for the first time in three months, and since the Bruins bottomed out entering the league’s Christmas break.

And more specifically when it comes to who those losses came against, with Thursday’s loss coming at the hands of the Metro-best Rangers and Saturday’s loss coming against a desperate Flyers team fighting for their playoff lives.

Speaking after Thursday’s loss, Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery admitted that he was ‘surprised’ and ‘disappointed’ that his team didn’t have more jump given the stakes of that game. I gotta say, I was surprised, too, as the Bruins have routinely been able to ‘get up’ for games against upper-echelon teams. It’s the basement dwellers that’ve given ’em fits. And Saturday was more of the same, with the Bruins outshot in all three periods, and on the board with a mild 20 shots by the night’s end, and without a goal for the first 50 minutes of action… and against a Philly team they pounded for a combined 12 goals in their first two head-to-heads of the 2023-24 season, including a six-spot last week at TD Garden.

So, what was the big takeaway this time around?

“I just told the team, like, ‘This is what we gotta used to,'” Montgomery said following Saturday’s loss in Philadelphia. “It’s what it’s gonna be for the rest of the year. So you gotta have second and third efforts to create offense and you have to be desperate getting back above pucks defensively.”

The coach who held the job before Montgomery used to say that it “hurts to win.” It was a go-to line late in the regular seasons and it was a mantra in the playoffs. This time around, it’s probably more along the lines of “it’s gonna be exhausting to win.” This year’s Bruins team has had its best success when their checking game has been there. It’s been their best way to negate their lack of consistent scoring below their top lines, and it’s often led to offense at the other end.

That often requires a game that can be, well, boring at times. But it’s gonna become a must for this club whether they like it or not, with Montgomery noting outright that teams tend to dump the puck in ’10 to 15 percent more’ in the playoffs than they do the regular season. And with the Bruins already getting a taste of what they’re gonna need to adapt to this time around. Now, whether or not they can elevate to that for the long haul remains to be seen.

But the good news for the Bruins is that it’s coming now opposed to last year when it simply blitzed the Bruins out of their skin in round one.

2020 draft pick Riley Duran signs with B's

In what’s become a yearly tradition of sorts, another Bruins prospect in the college ranks has decided to forego the remainder of his collegiate career for a contract with the Bruins.

This time around, it’s Woburn, Mass. native and 2020 sixth-round pick Riley Duran who has decided to make the jump to the pro game, with Duran and the Bruins coming to terms on a two-year, entry-level contract Sunday.

Drafted by the Bruins with the No. 182 overall pick in 2020 following a pre-college ‘career’ that included runs with the Cape Cod Whalers as well as Lawrence Academy, Duran has spent the last three seasons playing for Providence College. At Providence, Duran proved to be a valuable weapon for Nate Leaman’s program, with 27 goals and 55 points in 102 games played.

And in what was his third and final season for the Friars, the 6-foot-2, 185-pound Duran put up nine goals (second-most among all Friars) and 16 points (eighth-most on the team) in 35 games for PC.

Duran also performed admirably when given a shot to represent the United States at the 2022 World Junior Championships, with two goals and five points in five games for Team USA.

He'll join the P-Bruins on an amateur tryout for the remainder of the season, while his two-year contract, which checks in with an $867,500 cap hit, begins next season.

He’s also the third member of what was a four-pick 2020 draft class to sign with the Bruins, joining second-round pick Mason Lohrei and third-round pick Trevor Kuntar. That leaves defenseman Mason Langenbrunner, drafted with a fifth-round pick, as the only 2020 class member yet to sign their contract with the B’s. Langenbrunner is currently at Harvard University, and is coming off a 2023-24 season that featured five assists in 32 games for the Crimson.

Ty Anderson is a writer and columnist for 985TheSportsHub.com. He has been covering the Bruins since 2010, and has been a member of the Boston chapter of the PHWA since 2013. Any opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of 98.5 The Sports Hub, Beasley Media Group, HockeyBuzz.com or any subsidiaries. Yell at him on Twitter/X: @_TyAnderson.

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