McAvoy: Bruins in 'new territory' with poor start to season

The Boston Bruins' 3-4-1 start to the campaign is an unfamiliar feeling for star defenseman Charlie McAvoy.

"This is a bit of new territory for us, to have this happening early in the year after these last couple years where we're usually just gangbusters," McAvoy told NHL.com's Amalie Benjamin. "I think a little bit of our attitude is it hasn’t won us anything being the best team in October."

The Bruins began the 2022-23 season with 17 wins in their first 19 games en route to the most successful regular season in NHL history, then won 11 of 13 out of the gate last year. Both hot starts didn't yield any playoff success, as Boston's been eliminated by the Florida Panthers in each of the past two postseasons.

Although it's been a rocky start, McAvoy isn't overly concerned.

"We're fine," he said. "We're not going to panic. It's game eight. Hopefully, we've got a lot of games left and we'll keep getting better."

The Bruins are on a three-game losing streak that began Oct. 19 in Utah. Head coach Jim Montgomery made headlines after that game for chewing out captain Brad Marchand on the bench for a mistake. The pair said they've moved past the viral incident, but Marchand agrees his club needs to find improvement quickly.

"It's of our own doing, which is a good thing, I guess, because we can rectify it," he said of Boston's poor play. "We've got to get back to playing the right way for 60 minutes and doing the right things all the time, and understanding that success is hard and we need to play a hard game to win. That's how we've always won. We just need to get back to that."

Through seven games, Boston ranks 19th in goals for, 25th in goals against, and is converting only 15.2% of its power-play opportunities. The underlying stats aren't much better - the Bruins rank 28th in five-on-five expected goal share at 45.43%, according to Natural Stat Trick.

The Bruins' next chance to get on track comes Saturday against the Toronto Maple Leafs, who they went 4-0-0 against last season before eliminating them in the first round of the playoffs.