Less than a week after opening their new season with a sound shutout win on home ice, the Bruins returned to the Garden Monday night with a parade — an unremitting display of poor play, weak effort, and all-around boo-boos in which they gift-wrapped the visiting Senators a 4-1 victory.
Leading the parade of Black and Gold horribles: a power play, or an alleged power play, that led to a pair of Tim Stützle goals in the first period. The first Stützle strike was shorthanded. The second came seconds after the power play expired, but it was generated off a two-on-one break while the Bruins were on the power play.
Senators up, 2-0, on five shots, and the night was young.
By the 5:19 mark of the second period — after Michael Amadio bumped the Senators’ lead to 4-0 — Bruins coach Marco Sturm called a 30-second timeout and addressed his bedraggled, drained charges as the hometown crowd (announced attendance: 17,850) sat there nearly as stupefied as the players on the Boston bench.
“Try to go back to the basics,” said Sturm, asked what he had to say during the timeout — what was clearly, and deservedly, an animated one-way conversation. “We touched on it between periods, and then we go out and pretty much play the same style again.”
Sturm’s “guess,” he said, “was that they didn’t hear it clear enough.”
So much of hockey, one member of the media pack noted to Sturm, is effort, emotion, and execution. Was he happy with any of it?
“No,” he said, offering no further context.
It was the second straight game — both losses — in which the Bruins scored but one goal. It was by rookie James Hagens, who threw in a centering pass from behind the goal line and watched it ricochet in off goalie Samuel Ersson (who relieved starter Linus Ullmark after two periods).
Only four games into the new 84-game season, the Bruins have received little in the way of meaningful offense, or any offense, from their core offensive leaders — the lot of captain David Pastrnak, Elias Lindholm, Morgan Geekie, and Pavel Zacha have one goal total. If they have hope of building on last season’s 100-point effort, they’ll need help soon from that core group, including newcomer JJ Peterka, who tallied once in each of the first two games but has been shut out since.
Other observations following one of the more listless home efforts in recent memory:
Sway comes up short: Jeremy Swayman faced only 24 shots. While the loss cannot be pinned on him, he is the No. 1 goalie and he did not make big stops when needed, particularly in the early going.
Stützle scored those first two goals on two-on-one break-ins. Had he snuffed out one — particularly on No. 2, initially muffed by Stützle — the night could have been far different.
Geekie is off to another slow start: They need him to score, which the track record shows he can do in bunches. He entered the night with zero goals and only two shots on net through three games. He landed three on net Monday, but he needs to deliver more.
Inside ice is still an issue: In the first two games, it looked like the ongoing bugaboo of the past few seasons might have been addressed. The Bruins did a better job of getting to prime shooting spots. Not so Saturday in Minnesota, and not so Monday, as well.
To his credit, Geekie stormed in on a breakaway at 4:46 of the first, the game scoreless, and sizzled in a 29-foot wrister. It clanged off the post and out. They needed him to bury it.
Too slow to summon emotion: Sturm shares in this, too. He waited until the score was 4-0 before calling the timeout. He should have called it after the sleepwalking power play led to the 2-0 Ottawa lead.
It wasn’t until Sturm turned his lines inside out and upside down late in the second period that the roster showed some spark. Big hitter Nikita Zadorov combined for four hits in back-to-back shifts. On a night when they totaled only 19 shots on net, the Bruins needed to summon some nasty much earlier.
“I think we’ve just got to get back to our identity,” said Zadorov, who also noted there remain 80 games to go. “I think our identity is to play real good defense, structured hockey. We’re not an offensive team. We’re not a skilled team. We’ve been talking about this for two years.”
It’s a mistake, noted Zadorov, to look to make plays “through five sticks.”
“We’re a simple team,” he said. “We’re going to get pucks deep, get on the forecheck, and wear teams down, and we’ll get our opportunities.”
Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at kevin.dupont@globe.com.