After the Bruins suffered their 10th straight loss, Nikita Zadorov issued a strong message.
The Boston Bruins have been in a free fall since dealing away several key pieces at the trade deadline, as they lost their 10th straight game on Thursday night when they fell 4-1 at the hands of the Montreal Canadiens. While the B's have been out of playoff contention for a while now, their players still want to win, leading to a strong message from Nikita Zadorov after the game.
Zadorov signed a six-year, $30 million contract with the Bruins last offseason, with the hope being he could help the team go on a deep playoff run this season. Instead, the bottom has finally fallen out from underneath Boston, and it's clear a rebuild is in their future. For now, though, Zadorov still wants to win games, but he admitted that the Bruins opponents are simply outworking them on a nightly basis.
“The other teams are just hungrier than ours,” Zadorov said. “They want to win more, that’s the bottom line. We’re just not hard on the puck. We’re easy to play against.”
Nikita Zadorov, Bruins running out of time to snap lengthy losing streak
At this point, the Bruins are just playing out the string before they can advance to the offseason, but they'd still like to win games along the way. Victories have been tough to come by, though, as Boston's roster is a shell of the one that pushed the eventual Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers to six games in their second-round matchup last year.
The more the B's lose, the better their standing in the upcoming 2025 NHL draft will be, but that's a far cry from what fans and the team were hoping for entering the season. Zadorov and his teammates are still giving it all, though, even with nothing on the line, and they will try to snap their 10-game losing streak when they return to the ice against the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday.
